by Bree Cariad
“Thanks.”
As if there wasn’t enough stress in his life, Alex reminded them as they started stage five that this was the month to decide if they wanted to go forward or not.
“He could have chosen a better moment,” Stephanie complained to Cami a few days later as they went out to lunch. “Chris is stressed enough without this on top of it.”
“True, but it is stage five. How are you two doing?”
“Good. Except for his grandma being a pain, our courting has gone well.” Pausing to take a bite of her sandwich, Stephanie took a good look at her friend. It had been months since she had spent any time with her. Cami and Jerod had kept to themselves through the winter. From what she could tell, her friend was even happier now than she was on her wedding day. “Wedded life agrees with you.”
Laughing, Cami nodded. “Yes, it does. I couldn’t be happier. Jerod’s blocked off two weeks this summer and he’s taking me roller coaster hopping. I’m so excited.”
“What’s roller coaster hopping?”
“We’re going to go from theme park to theme park to try out the scariest rides.”
“Better you than me.”
Grinning, Cami nodded. “Yeah, you’d hate it. Kathy thinks I’m nuts, too. Drake, however, is jealous.”
“How’s little Brandon?”
The newest Covington was a definite cutie. Stephanie was glad his parents decided to call him by his middle name as two versions of Alexander were enough for one family.
“Ohh,” Camille said, her face lighting up. “You really need to stop in at the Brethertons’ and see him. He’s so cute. And he even giggles now. Unfortunately he got his mommy into trouble.”
“How?” Stephanie couldn’t figure out how a four-month-old baby could get anyone in trouble.
“Kathy’s so happy being a mom that she blurted out at the dinner table that she wasn’t going back to school. Xan was less than pleased. Something about he wasn’t letting her give up on her dreams. Next time I saw her, she said she’d forgotten what a hard hand her husband had.”
Snorting a laugh, Stephanie grinned, turning a little pink. Looking around to make sure nobody was listening, she leaned in. “I finally know how that feels.”
Cami raised an eyebrow inviting more if she wanted to talk, but didn’t push.
“I asked him to do it. I wanted to know how it felt. Plus,” she added dryly. “It was either that or write something five thousand times. Five thousand,” she stressed making Camille grin. “Turns out, I get what you guys were talking about. There is a certain relief that comes from it.”
“What did you do that made him assign you so many lines?” her friend asked in amusement.
“I told Marjorie off for thinking her little girl would end up with a Covington one day.”
Laughing loudly, Camille leaned back in her seat. “I heard about that. Drake laughed himself silly.”
* * * * *
In late April, two major things happened that made Stephanie wonder about life. And they both happened on the same day. The first was that Dora came home from work one day with a strange look on her face.
“You all right?” Stephanie asked. “I promise I didn’t burn dinner.” In fact, she was rather proud of herself. She had finally managed to make meatloaf.
Her friend offered a tired smile. “Budget cuts. As of June, my position will be handed over to a volunteer.”
“That sucks!”
“I know. Carilyn Bretherton was spitting mad. She wasn’t there when they passed the new budget for next year because she was babysitting her grandson and Mrs. Taylor got her stuff pushed through.”
“Great. So they will have more comfortable chairs next year but no you.”
“Well, on the bright side,” Dora said, taking plates down and setting three places at the table, “I’ll be able to help Chris at the inn.”
Pulling her into a hug, Stephanie held her close. “You know we love you, right? You don’t have to do this.”
“I know. But I hate not being busy and it might be kind of fun to boss your boyfriend around.”
Giggling at the thought, Stephanie let her go to take the dinner out of the oven.
“If it isn’t my two favorite women,” Chris said, walking into the room. They had given him carte blanche to let himself into the house whenever he needed. Dora had even given him his own key. She said it was easier than making the trek to the door every time he came over but Stephanie secretly thought Dora and Chris acted like brother and sister and that to her friend, it just felt natural for him to be around. “Smells good,” Chris said, inhaling as he bent over and kissed her hello.
“I managed not to burn it,” Stephanie said proudly, placing the food on the table. “It’s celebration time.”
“Good for you, sweetheart. How are you doing, Dory? Auxiliary keeping you busy?” Chris sat down and Dora shook her head.
“Actually, are you still looking for someone to run the inn?”
“Yes, why?” he asked, taking the plate Stephanie passed him.
“I’m out of a job come June.”
Startled, he stared at her. “Why are they letting you go? You keep the place running.”
“Budget issues.”
There was a pause and he grinned. “Well, think about it, but if you’re interested? I’d love to have you. You’ll probably be able to keep even me organized and that’s quite a feat.”
“I’m up to it,” she teased. “And Mrs. Bretherton said I could work any hours I wanted from now until then. She told me she would write me a recommendation letter, if you need one.”
His eyes twinkled. “Oh, I’m sure I would need at least… oh, zero recommendations. I know your work ethic. I also know how much, or should I say how little, you get paid there. With what you would be doing at the inn, you’ll be making more money.”
“Don’t you waste money on me,” she said in a belligerent tone. “The first couple years are the hardest for any business. As long as I make enough to pay my bills...”
The two of them bickered back and forth like siblings as Stephanie watched. Dora was set on not taking any more than she needed and Chris was intent on paying her what she was worth. “Now children,” she said as the doorbell chimed. They both rolled their eyes at her making her laugh. “I’ll get that.” Their playful bickering followed her to the door where Alex, Xan, and Drake Covington stood, their arms full of boxes.
“Come in,” she said and they walked inside, placing the boxes in the living room. “What’s all this?”
“We were clearing out the shed looking for a few things,” Xander explained as his brother and father went out to get more boxes, “and ran across the stuff Mom saved from your old house.”
“I figured it was safer with you than getting so buried in our stuff we might never find it again,” Alex said gruffly as they unloaded the last box. “If you don’t need it, feel free to toss it out. But I think there are a few things you might want.”
Chris and Dora joined them, looking at the boxes.
Alex walked over and patted Dora on the arm. “I just heard about what happened at your job. If you need anything…”
She smiled and shook her head. “Thanks, Mr. Covington, but I’ve accepted a job as Chris’s boss.” Chris barked a laugh and she giggled. “I’m gonna help run his inn.”
After the Covingtons left and they finished their dinner, Dora and Chris accompanied Stephanie into the living room where twelve large boxes now stood. “That’s a lot of stuff,” she said. “I figured there might be one or two boxes. Not twelve.”
“Want to open them? Or put them away?” Dora asked in a kind tone.
“Let’s open them.” The words were out before she consciously thought of them, but as Stephanie and Dora grabbed a couple boxes, Chris took out a pocket knife and sliced through the tops of each box. There was a lot of stuff she wasn’t even sure what it was, but there were also the stuffed animals she had as a kid, a box of her old school stuff, several p
osters from her bedroom walls which made Chris laugh, and to her surprise one box held her mother’s sewing machine. “I never thought I’d see this again,” she breathed as she pulled it out. It was an antique, something her mother had received from her own grandmother.
As she and Dora unpacked the rest of the sewing box, Chris’s silence made her turn toward him. “Sweetheart,” he said softly, “look at these.” He reached into the box he was looking at and pulled out a pile of picture albums. Flipping over a cover, he smiled. “Look, they’re all of you.” In fact, they were of each year of her life, starting from the year before her mother died and going backward.
“I can’t believe Mom did this,” Stephanie said as she put aside one from when she was two, her first year in Hyacinth. Chris was holding two more and she figured they were from her first two years but he was frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“From the dates on them, they’re from before you were born.” He opened up the oldest and the three of them looked at the first picture. It was a picture of her mother when she was a teenager. Only there were two of her. “Jeanie and Jessica Alverson,” Chris read from the scrawl under the picture. “Age fifteen.”
“Mom was a twin?”
“Wow, not just a twin,” Dora said as they turned a couple more pages. “An identical twin.”
The first album took the twins through high school, ending in a wedding photo. The man was tall with a crew cut and he was in a marine uniform. Her mother smiled into the camera with her sister standing nearby. “Taylor and Jessie’s wedding day,” she read quietly. Something was wrong about the photo, but Stephanie couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
The second album was of her parents’ married life. A third of the way through there was a newspaper picture of the two of them at a hospital bed with Jessica holding a baby. “Was that you?” Dora asked in excitement.
“No,” Chris said, reading aloud. “Taylor and Jessie Trundle are pleased to announce the birth of their son Bryant Gregory. From the date, he was about five years older than Steph.”
Stephanie’s chest began to tighten. Something was wrong here and she knew it. But she couldn’t stop turning the pages. One whole page was taken up with a faded newspaper clipping. Major Taylor Trundle Missing In Action, Feared Dead was the headline.
“Oh, no,” Dora whispered.
On the page opposite was another clipping. It was a picture of Jessica holding another baby. Chris read, his voice soft even as his arm wrapped around Stephanie’s shoulders. “Jessica Trundle is pleased to announce the birth of her daughter Stephanie Anne. Her husband Taylor has been missing in action for three months but his wife is sure he will make it home to his family.”
Dora turned the page and all three of them gasped at the headline on the next newspaper clipping. Jessica Trundle Killed By Drunk Driver.
Her head pounding, Stephanie shook her head. How could this be? This newspaper was twenty years old but her mother died just a few years ago. “This doesn’t make sense.”
The next few pages were filled with pictures of a young boy and a baby girl. And then another news clipping. Major Taylor Trundle Is Coming Home. Clearing his throat, Chris read even as his hand took hers and held it tightly. “For years our little community was saddened by all of the horrible things that happened to the young Trundle family but today we are excited to announce that Major Taylor Trundle has been recovered, is alive, and is set to come home within the next few months. Bryant and Stephanie may not remember him, but their father will soon be back in their lives. Jeanie, Jessica’s sister, who has been taking care of the kids should be pleased her brother-in-law is coming home. She can return to school and the entire family can move on with their lives…”
“That was rather badly put,” Dora said quietly, squeezing Stephanie’s hand. “You realize what this means?”
“My mom wasn’t my mom,” Stephanie whispered. And that was when it hit her. Grabbing the previous scrapbook, she turned to the wedding photo and saw what her mind had tried to point out before. The woman she had thought was her mother was actually her aunt. Looking at the photo it was so obvious. Her mother had had a mole on her chin. Jeanie Alverson did as well. Jessica did not. Putting the book down, she stared at the one in Dora’s hands.
Chris held her as Dora turned the page. There was only one last news-clipping before the rest of the book was empty. The headline made her shake her head. Stephanie Trundle And Jeanie Alverson Are Missing. “Two days before Major Trundle returned from being a prisoner of war, little Stephanie Trundle went missing,” Dora read quietly. “It is feared that her aunt, Jeanie Alverson who has lately shown signs of severe depression, has taken her and run for some unknown reason. Major Trundle and Jeanie’s father, Garrison Alverson, plead for her to return the little girl.”
Hiccupping, Stephanie’s body trembled, the shaking getting worse every second. “My entire life’s a sham!”
Gathering her up in his arms, Chris pulled her close. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he murmured as she burst into tears. She couldn’t believe it. The woman she had always thought was her mother was, in fact, her aunt.
“Why!” she screamed, slamming her fists against his immoveable arms. “Why did she lie to me?” Huge sobs erupted from her throat and she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on. “I’m not me,” she cried.
“Of course you are,” Chris said quietly. “Sweetheart, you’re still Stephanie.”
“But everything I thought I knew was a lie. My mother wasn’t my mother and my father wasn’t my father.” As Dora went to put the scrapbook back into the box, an envelope fell out. Picking it up, Dora handed it to her. “You open it,” Stephanie sniffled.
The envelope contained her birth certificate, something she had never seen before. “Wait. Stephanie! By this, you’re a year younger than we thought.”
“What?”
“You’re not twenty. You’re nineteen.” Dora flipped through the pages of the scrapbook to her birth announcement and the date corroborated it.
Her mother had even lied about her age? Shaking her head, Stephanie leaned against the man who held her tightly. “This is insane.”
For several days, Stephanie didn’t do much. She couldn’t. Her entire body was in shock. Christopher did all of his work by phone so he could stay with her during the day and she mostly just sat staring at the photo albums, more and more turning to the news clippings about Taylor Trundle, her biological father. On day five, Chris forced her to wake up out of the numbness that she felt. Of course, he did it rather sharply with a hard slap to her rear.
“Chris!”
“Enough, Stephanie,” he said firmly. The love in his eyes made her lips quiver. She didn’t want to cry again. “What do you want to do?”
“About what?”
“You wondered who your father was. You now know. What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Why did Jeanie take me from them? Why did she leave my brother? Why did she pass herself off as my mom? None of this makes sense, Chris.”
“Maybe you need to find out from them.”
Startled, she gazed into his loving eyes. “Them?”
“Your father, grandparents. Your brother. You have blood relatives, sweetheart. Your only way to find answers, if you need them, is to contact them.”
“But what if they’re bad people?” Her fear was that her mother… aunt had taken her from them because her father was a bad man.
“Like you said, why would she leave your brother if they were? Plus, you have me, Steph. I won’t let them harm you.” Wrapping her arms around him, she held tight. Chris was the most stable person she had ever met. Maybe with his help she could figure this out.
Chapter 7
The plane banked, making its descent. Stephanie gazed out the window at the forest below them. Missoula, Montana. She had never heard of it until a few weeks back and now she was about to land and meet the man who was her father. Chris had done a lot of the legwork. A friend of
his who was a PI had run a check on the Alversons and on Taylor Trundle and they came up clean. No problems except for the stuff she had already seen.
Dora, who had quickly caught up with all the work on the inn, had everything firmly in hand so that Chris could accompany her. “Don’t worry,” she teased him before they left. “I’ll have all the rooms in pink wallpaper and have turned your kitchen upside down by the time you get back.”
Squeezing her hand, Chris kissed her cheek. “You doing okay?”
“I have no idea.”
Chuckling, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Everything’s going to be fine, sweetheart. Jerod contacted a friend of his who lives here. He’s going to meet us at the airport. Turns out he knows your father.” Trembling, she nodded. Was she ready to do this? It was only weeks ago that who she thought she was was blown apart. Stephanie just hoped the shocks were over. She couldn’t take many more surprises.
John Durrant was a nice man. He shook her hand, holding it between his own. “You look like your mother,” he commented as he put their suitcases in the bed of his truck.
Laughing, but mainly from nerves, she blurted out, “My mother or my aunt?” Chris’s hold on her hand tightened and she leaned on him.
John’s eyes softened. “I know this must be difficult. Come on. Let’s get you to the hotel.” They got into his truck and he started off. “I’ve talked with Taylor and Bryant. They’re both relieved you’re alive and well, of course, are excited to see you. But they also understand this is difficult for you. Your grandparents are looking forward to seeing you as well.” He told her a little about what to expect. “Taylor was crippled in the skirmish he was in. Came back with only one leg. He uses a prosthetic. Bryant just graduated from college a year back. He and his fiancée Carrie are getting married in August. They have a little girl named Samantha.”
She was an aunt. And she knew enough about the rest of the world to know that a baby out of wedlock wasn’t as shocking as it would be in Hyacinth. John dropped them off at their hotel so they could rest and gear up to meet her father and brother. Stephanie didn’t want to be alone and Chris was matter of fact about, “What they don’t know in Hyacinth won’t hurt them.” So instead of two rooms, they shared one.