“I know that, Amanda.” The last time she’d been home, Amanda had been at least three inches shorter. Now her younger sister was nearly as tall as Mara, and seemed just as angry as Mara had been at her age. “I’m not here to impose.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I asked her to stay,” Gran said, her voice placating. “She’s family.”
Amanda snorted. That got Zeke’s attention. He turned toward the adults and began babbling with the lemur in one hand and the dinosaur in the other.
“I am not changing dirty diapers, and I’m not babysitting for free.” Amanda scowled at the little boy. At least she was acknowledging his presence now. On Friday she had walked into the kitchen, seen them and immediately returned outside. Mara had no idea what to say to make things alright between the two of them.
Before the tornado, Collin had been worried about their little sister. She’d been acting out, rebellious. Mara thought things had changed, but obviously not very much. Not that she could blame Amanda.
When she was turning eighteen, the last thing she would have wanted was a family member to show up at the orchard with a baby in tow.
“Family doesn’t ignore family,” Amanda said, then whirled around. She stomped down the hall and up the stairs.
“Well, I guess Amanda isn’t thrilled that we’re here.”
Gran reached across the space between them and squeezed Mara’s hand. “She’ll soften up. People coming and going is hard on her. It was hard on all three of you, but I think in some ways, it’s worse for her.”
“Why?”
Gran’s smile was watery. “Because, in her experience, people who leave don’t come back. Your parents haven’t been here in years. No calls, no cards. Your grandfather died. You left for college.”
“But—” Mara started to protest, although she knew Gran was right. She’d abandoned her family when she left for college, and she had pushed them further away when she became pregnant. She couldn’t expect Amanda to jump for joy to have her absentee sister show up with a baby on her hip. “Yeah. I did.”
“You’re here now, and none of us blame you for going.” There wasn’t a hint of disdain or censure in Gran’s voice, just more of the no-nonsense that Mara had missed from the moment she left. “So, you’re back, and we’re happy, and I’m your babysitter. No arguments.”
“Gran, you don’t—” Mara stopped herself. Gran never did anything she didn’t want to do. If she wanted to spend time with Zeke, Mara wouldn’t stand in her way. “Okay.”
“Good. Now, while I’m watching Zeke, why don’t you go see if there is anything missing from our cupboards? As long as you’re here, you might as well have a few favorites in the kitchen. If we have everything you need, you could start prepping dinner. I was thinking meat loaf and veggies for tonight.”
“It’s not even noon, why worry about dinner right now? Besides, I’m a guest.” A guest who hadn’t gone willingly into a kitchen in ten years.
“You’re family, and we all share kitchen duties here.”
Mara chuckled. “I totally get it now. You didn’t want us to stay out here because you missed us. You wanted extra time off from the kitchen.”
Gran slid her index finger along her nose and winked. It was her silly way of implying that something said sarcastically was true. “You were always the smart one.”
“Does the cook still get the night off from cleanup?”
Gran nodded.
“Then I’ll check the cabinets and I’ll prep the meat loaf, but only because I don’t want to deal with the aftermath of pots and pans.”
Mara crossed the room, picked up Zeke and placed a noisy kiss on his cheek. The baby chortled and said, “Maa baall.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I love you,” she told him. “Gran’s going to play with you while I search the cabinets, and prep dinner. And then, I’ll make you something quick for lunch. Because I’m Super Mom.” She put him down, and he continued chattering to his toys on the floor. “I have no idea why I just told him that.”
“Because you want him to know you’ll be here. Same reason I used to tell you kids where I’d be when you were in here playing and watching TV.” Gran picked a book off the coffee table and took a seat closer to Zeke. “We’ll be fine. Go.”
Mara watched her son a few more moments. He was happy. Healthy. Gran was happy. Healthy. She glanced up the stairs. She’d figure out a way to reach Amanda, and she would figure out how to share her son with his father. First, though, she had to make a grocery list, and figure out how to create a meat loaf from whatever Gran had in the fridge.
Taking her phone from her pocket, she tapped a few letters and began looking for an easy recipe.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JAMES PULLED INTO his parents’ driveway Saturday morning, feeling a little hungover despite the fact that he hadn’t had anything to drink. After spending Friday afternoon at the farmers’ market, he’d returned to the second half of his patrol shift which turned into a double thanks to one of the other deputies calling in sick. He’d spent the rest of the night into the wee hours patrolling the county, and stopping a handful of Slope patrons from driving tipsy.
He’d missed dinner and was hoping to pacify his parents with a quick lunch before calling Mara. He shut off the engine and stepped into the thick air.
There was no breeze this morning to sway the marigolds and black-eyed Susans in his mother’s flowerbeds, and even the New Guinea impatiens that she swore were more resistant to hot summer temperatures seemed to droop. James took the two steps leading to the wide front porch of their Victorian home and sighed when he stepped into the cool foyer. He dropped his keys in the Depression glass bowl on the table by the door.
“Anybody home?” he called but didn’t wait for an answer. They would be in the kitchen. He continued through the butler’s pantry converted into a small office, with shelves full of his father’s law enforcement awards and James’s old football trophies. His sneakers made little noise on the hardwood floors.
In the kitchen with its miles of countertops and a large butcher-block island, his mother, Anna, pulled a roast from the oven and wiped her forehead.
“Hi, sweetheart. I think we should have grilled. I’m never going to get this house cooled down from the roast,” she said. James kissed her cheek as he passed and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge.
“Trust me, we don’t want to be standing over a barbecue grill in this heat. Sorry I had to cancel last night.” Anna shrugged, not seeming too upset that he’d canceled. He took a long drink from the bottle. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Go entertain your father. He’s making me crazy,” Anna said. She hooked a strand of hair behind her ear with one hand and turned off the oven with the other. “We’ll eat in the formal dining room. I am not eating in this hot kitchen,” she said, more to herself than him. She reached for plates and glasses.
Jonathan wasn’t in the living room, so James wandered the ground floor of the big house, looking for him. He was in the solarium, reading. He’d situated the wheelchair under a potted palm, and a box fan blew cool air on his feet. This room, too, had been renovated. Now, while sunlight poured through the tinted windows, the AC unit kept the room cool and comfortable.
“Hey, Dad.”
“I didn’t hear you come in, boy,” Jonathan said, setting aside the Stephen King novel he’d been reading.
“You having hot flashes or something?” he asked, motioning to the fan. He handed a second beer to his father. “Man-o-pause, I think they call it?”
Jonathan harrumphed at that. “Not hardly. This damn cast keeps my foot and leg heated to about a hundred degrees. The fan prevents me from combusting.”
“Mom says we’re eating in the dining room instead of the kitchen. It’s a little ripe in the
re, thanks to a pot roast and whatever else she’s got going.”
“I told her not to go to that kind of trouble. Isn’t like you’re company.”
“Just your only son, who lives alone and eats mostly frozen dinners and pizza.” James sat in a wicker chair that made him feel like a giant. His mother was crazy about wicker but had confined most of her pieces to this one room, her favorite. Scattered around the hanging ferns, potted palms and a few other tropical plants were a white wicker sofa, two rockers and the chair James occupied.
“You know what I meant.”
James did. He’d never thought much about how Collin and Mara had grown up, not until the recent trouble with their younger sister. Now that Mara was back and he knew she’d been in therapy for the past year or so, he looked at their upbringing differently. What had seemed, when they were teens, like the perfect, permanent vacation from parental rules and restrictions now looked quite different. It made him view his own parents differently.
Not that her upbringing excused her keeping his son from him. But maybe he could stop being such a hard-ass about it.
He was twenty-eight and had been on friendly terms with Jonathan and Anna since graduating from college. Deep in his soul he knew if he needed them, they would be by his side in an instant. Mara didn’t have that, at least not from her parents. Sure, she had Gladys and, before he’d died, she’d had her grandfather, Zeke, but was that the same thing?
Anna called them into the dining room. James grabbed the handles of Jonathan’s chair and wheeled him into the room with a table big enough to seat twelve people. Only three places were set with his mother’s favorite quilted placemats and the everyday stoneware plates—not the fancier dishes she brought out for their annual holiday parties. The roast still bubbled in the pan, smelling like all the good parts of his childhood.
He pushed Jonathan to the table, and since his father couldn’t stand to cut, James took over. After they’d filled their plates, Jonathan asked, “How’d it go at the market yesterday?”
“Most of the west wall is back up. We’ll be able to start on the roof and install the new windows next week. It’s a good roast, Mom,” he said around a bite of food.
Anna glowed at the compliment. Her blond hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and she wore a gauzy pink shirt and those pants that cut off at the knee. Compared to his father’s athletic shorts and T-shirt and James’s own cargos and T-shirt, she looked like she might be headed out to play bridge or attend a hospital board meeting. She always looked like that. Along with keeping her home in pristine condition, cooking meals from scratch and puttering in her garden, Anna liked to look polished. “Thank you. I just threw it together after your dad said you were coming for lunch. We haven’t seen enough of you lately. This new schedule is running you in circles.”
“The work has to be done.” He took another bite. “I’m going to stop the split shifts, though.”
“Of course. It’s too much to work your job and help the rebuilding crews,” Anna said.
“You’ve put in more than your fair share of time,” Jonathan agreed.
James felt as if the ten years he’d been out of high school dropped away, and his parents were patting his back for playing a good game or passing a test. Their approval of how he spent his time was nice to have, but he didn’t need it. He’d pitched in because this was his town. His help might be missed, but now he had more than the town to think of. He couldn’t work sixteen hours a day and have time to get to know Zeke. Starting today, he would let more time go by on that front.
“The reconstruction is coming along, but I’m stopping the splits for a different reason.” Throat dry, James took a drink of water, then cleared his throat. It wasn’t as if he were eighteen, and still needed his parents’ approval. He was established in his job, had a house, was a responsible adult. Why was he so nervous about telling his parents he had a kid?
“Well, sure, have to get ready for the election,” Jonathan said. “Get the paperwork angle figured out, think about promotions for the deputies, staffing. People will want to know your plans for the—”
“It isn’t about the election, either, although I will start to lay out my plans soon. It’s, ah, did you know Mara Tyler’s back in town?”
Jonathan sighed. “I knew she wouldn’t stay away indefinitely. At coffee this morning they were talking about her getting caught shoplifting.”
“The girls at bridge were talking about it, too. Margery Harris, you remember Adam’s mother-in-law? Well, she was telling me it was something silly, like cookies and milk. What kind of grown woman shoplifts cookies?” Anna shook her head. “Seriously, who over the age of ten tries to steal cookies and milk?”
“She wasn’t stealing anything,” James said. “She’s working on a new security system for Mallard’s. She set off the alarm on purpose.” Which was more or less true. She was testing to see if there was some kind of anti-theft alert for goods being taken from the store. When nothing happened on her way out, she’d planned to go straight to Mike Mallard with her findings; getting caught on the way back in caught her off guard. CarlaAnn’s penchant for gossip and vengeance took things from there. He wanted to dispute her version of events loudly, but if he’d learned anything from their teenage pranks, it was that gossip slowed if he just didn’t talk about it.
“You sure about that, son?” Jonathan asked, cocking an eyebrow. “You know the girl was out of control when you kids were still in school.”
“Kids’ pranks don’t put her on the track to the penitentiary.” And this conversation was quickly going in the wrong direction. His parents didn’t have to like Mara, but judging her based on who she was at seventeen wasn’t fair, either. “She’s a securities and tech specialist for a big company in Tulsa. Travels all over setting up new systems.”
“Sounds like you’re getting reacquainted with her really quick,” Anna said.
Jonathan pushed his half-eaten plate of food away. “You got all this from the fifteen minutes you were questioning her in Mike Mallard’s office?”
Yep, the Slippery Rock gossip mill was definitely in fine shape. James shook his head.
“Actually, I started picking it up a few years ago when we were both in the same city for a security and law enforcement conference.” James knew he should rip off the having-a-child-with-Mara bandage quickly, but he couldn’t. Not when Jonathan and Anna still thought of her as a teenager on the verge of a criminal record. “We started hanging out whenever we were in the same cities.”
“I didn’t realize you were using that paid time for anything other than work,” Jonathan said.
“Speaking to my boss, I attended every conference workshop and lecture during those trips.” James took one last bite, chewed and swallowed. “Speaking to my father, I spent what little free time I had on those trips with an old friend. And now that old friend and I have a child together.”
Anna’s fork clattered to her plate, and her jaw dropped. Jonathan set his mouth in a thin line and shook his head. “That isn’t funny, James,” he said in the same lecturing voice he’d used when James was a child.
“It isn’t a joke. Zeke is fourteen months old, happy and healthy, and he’s in town with Mara. I thought you’d like to know.”
Anna looked from her husband to her son, then shook her head. “We’ve been grandparents for over a year and you didn’t bother to tell us?”
And now came the sticky part. How to reveal he hadn’t known about Zeke without that information turning them against Mara for life. Despite James’s inability to keep his lips off hers, he didn’t see a future of wedded bliss for the two of them. Still, having contentious almost-in-laws was not the way to create a stable family for their son.
“We left things on a bad note before Mara knew she was pregnant,” James said, deciding the truth was the best option in this instance. He didn’t wa
nt to lie, not to anyone, about Zeke. There were some bits of the relationship with Mara that he would keep to himself, though. Like the diamond ring collecting dust in his roll-top desk. “The point is that we’re working through all of that, and Zeke is here, and I thought you would like to meet him at some point.”
“Of course we want to meet him,” Anna said. Jonathan remained quiet.
“I’ll figure out a plan with Mara and let you know what works.”
The three of them were quiet for a long moment. James wasn’t sure what more to say. He was an adult, yet he felt like a kid lying to his parents—not the most mature move in the world, but keeping the explanation simple would be best for all of them, Mara included. His parents didn’t need to know she had walked out on him, they didn’t need to know she’d undergone therapy, and they didn’t need to know that he and Mara hadn’t completely worked things out between them.
Hell, until yesterday morning, he didn’t know she’d left Nashville because their relationship scared her. He needed to work out how he felt about that little bombshell for himself before sharing it with anyone else.
Anna stacked the plates and began clearing the table. Jonathan kept a sharp eye on James, making him feel like a fish on his father’s hook.
“Zeke and Gladys did the best they could,” Jonathan finally said, “and how Mara turned out the way she did when Collin has always been such an upstanding citizen, I can’t guess. But Mara Tyler has never been good for you.”
“She’s a friend, Dad, and I’m an adult who can choose whom and what he allows in his life.”
“She uses you.”
“She’s not using me, not now and not back then.” If anything, he had been the user. James could have ignored every prank, but a part of him wanted the excuse to be a rebel. Like Mara. He could have pushed her on the relationship front, too, but a part of him liked sneaking around. Having part of his life that wasn’t dictated by the family legacy.
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