by Mary Campisi
Cash stared at her belly. “You’re pregnant?” She nodded, eyes wet. “Pregnant,” he repeated, trying to comprehend what she’d just told him.
“We’re going to have a baby, Cash. Finally.”
He stared at her flat belly, imagined it round and filled with their child. “What about the testing? When do you get that?”
Tess leaned on tip toe, kissed him on the lips, and whispered, “It’s already done. Ramona went with me. We’re fine.”
“Really?” And then, “Ramona went with you?” That was almost as hard to believe as Tess being pregnant.
Her eyes sparkled. “She did. I think she’s starting to get used to me and maybe even like me a little.”
He laughed. “Don’t get too comfortable with that assumption. You can never tell with my aunt.” His smile faded and he pulled her to him. “I never should have left you.”
“Nate told me what happened with Stephanie.” Another kiss, this one deeper. “Don’t get mad at him for breaking the news. It was a big step for a guy who hates getting involved in other people’s business. He did it for you, Cash. Because he cares.” She paused, held his gaze. “A lot of people care about you…and they care about Mason, too. I care about Mason. That poor boy deserves to be loved. I want him to be part of our lives.”
He didn’t think he could love Tess more than he already did, but those words made his heart swell, threaten to burst. “Thank you.” And then, “I took the DNA test. The results should be in soon, but I’m 99.999 percent sure he isn’t mine.”
She stroked his cheek, smiled. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
“He’s waiting in the kitchen.” Pause. “He could be with us for a while.”
The smile spread. “I hope so.”
“And when the time is right, maybe we can make it all legal.”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
Cash cupped her face between his hands. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“I’m here. I’ll always be right here for you, Daniel Casherdon, no matter what.” She kissed him softly on the mouth, whispered, “We are going to continue this later, and you are going to show me exactly how sorry you are, and how much you missed me, and especially how much you love me.” Another kiss, a dip of her tongue in his mouth. “In great detail.”
He pressed her against his hardness. “It will be my absolute pleasure.” Cash reached for the top button of her shirt. “In fact, why don’t we start now?”
She swatted his hand away, laughed. “Don’t you think we should show Mason his room and maybe let me welcome him?”
Cash sighed. “Shit, I forgot about him.” He scowled, fingered the opening of her blouse. “This kid business is going to get damn tricky, isn’t it?”
“It could,” she said, sliding a hand along his chest to his belly, lower still… “But I don’t think that will stop us, do you?”
“Hell, no.” He gave her a quick kiss, grabbed her hand and said, “Let’s go find Mason.”
15
When Pop stopped in at the Heart Sent, Tula Rae’s duffel bags were sitting in the front hallway. He’d never seen a person that age traveling with the kind of bags the college kids favored, and especially not one with swirly designs on it in purple, pink, blue, and orange. Tula Rae was one strange bird, but as much as he didn’t like to admit it, he’d miss her.
Now how about that? If anybody had told him that when the day came for his nemesis to leave he might not want her to go just yet, he’d have denied that possibility on Lucy’s grave. But these past weeks opened his eyes, taught him that different wasn’t always wrong, and what appeared to be one way didn’t necessarily make it so. Tula Rae might come across as a tough old bird with attitude, but there was a side of her that was softer than twice-raised dough.
“Come to kick me out the door, Angelo?” Tula Rae stood before him, dressed in an orange T-shirt and shorts, a grin splitting her sun-beaten face.
He might take offense at her words if he didn’t know she had a wicked streak of teasing built in that brain of hers. Pop gave her a grin of his own and held out a shoe box. “This might help make the trip shorter.”
“Shoes?” She took the box, flipped open the lid. “Aha! My very own pizzelles, all sprinkled up with powdered sugar.” She bent her head, sniffed like she was inhaling heaven. “Perfect.”
“I was gonna give you the recipe, but you don’t own a pizzelle maker and I can’t trust you to follow my recipe. Now I can allow a bit of powdered sugar dusting my pizzelles, but who’s to say you wouldn’t try to wrap them in bacon?”
“Darn right, who’s to say?” she said in a soft voice. Her eyes turned bright and for a half second Pop thought she might spill a tear. “You’re okay, Angelo. Lucy was mighty lucky and don’t you ever think she didn’t know it.”
He nodded, worried he might spill a tear or two of his own, and said, “Now that you’ve been here, no reason you can’t come back once in a while. Bring that husband of yours, too.”
She planted her hands on her hips and said, “No reason you can’t come to Maine. Prettiest water you ever seen, and they got them craggy rocks like you see in the movies. You’d like it. Maybe you ought to think about heading our way next year. Summer’s a beauty, but fall’s my favorite.”
“I think I’d like that.” Maybe Lucy and Teresina would like to see Maine. And no doubt, Jeremy Ross Dean would have to tag along, too. A road trip. He’d never been on one of those.
“We ain’t getting any younger, Angelo.” Tula Rae cocked a brow. “But we ain’t in the grave yet either. How about we show these young kids what living is all about? Teach them that if you got a will, you got a way to get there.”
“I like the sound of that, Tula Rae, indeed I do. I’ll see you next year, God willing, I certainly will.”
LIFE HAD a way of settling down after a few near catastrophes and that’s what happened in Magdalena. The Casherdon family was expanding and not just with the baby in Tess’s belly. Mason Richmond had moved in with them and while the boy might not technically be Cash’s son—according to the DNA test—the couple treated him as their own. Pop couldn’t say which of the three was happier, though he did wonder when and if the mother might show up to claim her son. The loose arrangement Stephanie Richmond had with the Casherdons got a whole lot looser recently, after Harry Blacksworth found out the dirt on the situation. Of course, Pop told him; why wouldn’t he? Two days and a few phone calls later, Harry informed Pop that Mason’s mother was taking care of her aunt, and when the aunt’s time came to meet her Maker, Stephanie planned to head to Florida. Now how was she going to do that? Harry had shrugged and avoided Pop’s gaze just long enough for Pop to figure out the man had bankrolled the operation. When Pop called him out on it, Harry said the mother promised to return for the holidays, though she didn’t say which ones those were.
Pop sighed. Time would tell, indeed it would. Tess and Cash were back to being inseparable with their new family and waiting on Baby Casherdon. Pop had it on good authority—as in Christine Desantro—that Nate was building the baby a crib. It was all hush-hush for now, but the unveiling would be around Christmas. Pop didn’t think he’d ever seen happier parents-to-be, though he couldn’t say their four-legged firstborn, Henry, felt the same way. Hard to play second fiddle when you’re used to the starting position, but it happened to every firstborn, four- or two-legged. The only consolation was Mason loved the dog and dang, but the dog had taken to following him around like the boy carried his oxygen. It did a body good to see such loyal companionship.
Pop leaned back in his chair, sipped his hibiscus tea, and smiled at his wife’s portrait. “Oh, Lucy, if you could have seen Olivia and Will Carrick when they found out they were going to be grandparents. You’d have thought they won six lotteries. Guess they did win, didn’t they? Olivia was fussing and fuming that nobody told her sooner, said this was the last time she’d take a vacation for longer than a weekend. Good thing Will knows how to calm her down and make her s
ee reason.” Pop chuckled. “He told me he’s looking into a trip to the Grand Canyon next year, but he’s waiting a while before he springs it on Olivia. That woman needs to settle down a bit or she won’t live to see her next decade. Imagine what she’d say if she knew about the near catastrophe with Cash’s ex? She’ll find out soon enough, but not yet.” His smile spread as he thought about the people who’d helped Tess and Cash. “You know who really came through in a pinch? You’ll never believe it, not in fifty-two million years.” He shook his head. “Ramona Casherdon. Imagine that! I always said there was more to that woman than scowls and pumpkin rolls. We knew she had a big heart for her nephew, but the way she stepped up for Tess? That showed real love and I gotta give her credit for that. She even said she’d help once the baby came if they wanted her to, and dang it all, if she didn’t tell Mason Richmond to call her Aunt Ramona.”
“Tess and Cash are having a cookout this weekend, and Lily’s already planning to make s’mores with Mason. That girl’s always got a plan. She’s already picking out names for Tess and Cash’s baby. Jacob, Luke, Finn. What kind of name’s Finn? Seems she’s convinced it’s a boy. We’ll find out soon enough now, won’t we?”
Oh, yes, they certainly would. “You’d be proud of me, Lucy. I’m expanding my notions on what makes a friend, and I surprised myself.” He reached for the letter he’d received that morning, studied the loopy scrawl. “Tula Rae wrote and sent me a recipe for collards.” No sense pretending he hadn’t been happy to hear from her. “She says the trick is in the fatback and the onions. Hmm. If the good Lord’s willing and I’m walking this earth next spring, I think Lily and I will plant us a row of collards.” Another chuckle escaped him as he pictured Lily eating the greens. “Tula Rae’s a good woman. Wise, too.” He cleared his throat, eased the letter onto the table, and grabbed the other letter. This handwriting was long and lean like its owner, Lester Conroy. Pop and Lester were heading to Harry’s Folly tonight for fried calamari and veal saltimbocca. Seems the man felt beholden to Pop for helping him figure a way out of the secrets he’d kept and the lies he’d told Phyllis. It hadn’t been easy or without a few curses, but after a dozen red roses, two boxes of cherry cordials, a new collar for her dog, and one of those “I’m sorry” cards, she’d forgiven him.
There was one more condition, though. Phyllis made him promise to use that investigative know-how to help someone in great need, someone the whole town knew and loved. Yup, Lester Conroy had to agree to help locate Mimi Pendergrass’s long-lost daughter and he couldn’t breathe a word of it to Mimi—in case he had no success, or the daughter refused to see her mother. Now if that didn’t show Phyllis’s cleverness and Lester’s big heart, he didn’t know what did.
“This place is going to start hopping again, Lucy. We’ve got fall around the corner, and a few babies on the way, and who knows what Christmas will bring? Maybe Anthony will make it home again this year, what do you think?” He contemplated seeing his son again, thought about telling him his daughter and Jeremy Ross Dean were pretty serious, and if he were a betting man, he’d say an engagement ring was coming soon.
Seconds after that last thought skittered through his brain, the front door burst open. “Grandpa! Grandpa!” He turned to find Lucy, Jeremy Ross Dean, and Teresina. “Oh, Grandpa, we have news for you!” She stood before him, blue eyes sparkling, face flushed. “Guess who’s getting married?”
The End
AFTERWORD
Many thanks for choosing to spend your time reading A Family Affair: The Gift. I’m truly grateful. If you enjoyed it, please consider writing a review on the site where you purchased it. (Short ones are equally welcome.) And now, I must head back to Magdalena and help these characters get in and out of trouble! If you’d like to be notified of my new releases, please sign up at my website: http://www.marycampisi.com.
WATCH me make pizzelles with my mom and get the recipe: https://marycampisi.com/making-pizzelles-with-mom/
COPYRIGHT 2016 by Mary Campisi
A Family Affair: The Gift is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and situations are all products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real persons, locales, or events are purely coincidental. This e-book is copyright protected. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
ISBN: 978-1-942158-18-9
INTRO TO THE BETRAYED TRILOGY
Excerpt from The Betrayed Trilogy
Sometimes hiding in the shadows is the only way to protect your heart.
Quinn Burnes’s mother disappeared when he was only fifteen, leaving him with a despondent father, a little sister who suffers panic attacks, and eight notebooks containing the truth about his mother. He guards this secret for eighteen years, until on an otherwise normal day, his mother re-enters his life, pleading for his help. She’s in danger and the only thing that can save her is reclaiming the identity she shunned years ago.
Quinn is a master of emotional detachment, from his successful career as a personal injury attorney to his strings of meaningless relationships with beautiful women who possess uneasy temperaments; a sure formula to keep his heart safe and ensure he’s the first to walk away. Until he meets the mysterious Danielle, a woman with too many secrets who’s on the run from the abusive, estranged husband she shot and may have killed. Danielle isn’t like any woman he’s ever met, but can he risk his heart for someone who’s doing exactly what his mother did eighteen years ago? Someone who may ultimately leave him, just like his mother?
The Betrayed Trilogy
Book 1: Pieces of You
Book 2: Secrets of You
Book 3: What’s Left of Her
Also available: The Betrayed Trilogy Boxed Set
PIECES OF YOU
Pieces of You
The Betrayed Trilogy, Book One
by
Mary Campisi
PROLOGUE
People talked about the disappearance of Evie Arbogast Burnes for years. How had it happened? When? Where? And in the good Lord’s name, why? They pieced together a story bit by bit, an eventual telling that eased them back to a manageable level where they could send their children to the grocery store without following them halfway there, just in case. Evie had been a woman, full-grown when she vanished, the wife of Rupert Burnes, mother to Quinn and little Annalise.
There’d never been any answers, despite the diligence of the town and Rupe himself, driving a one-hundred-mile radius in his Ford pickup to distribute flyers, talk to local officials, go door to door—anything to find his wife.
Evie Burnes just disappeared and no one ever learned the truth behind it, though many guessed, or, after a time, filled in their own tales. Most didn’t want to know for fear the answers would be too stark to accept into a town like Corville, Pennsylvania, population 5,298.
Generations of families lived there; grandfather, father, son, and so on, painting their names on trucks, buildings, and lawn service vehicles. Corville provided safe harbor from cities like Philly and Pittsburgh, where next-door neighbors remained nameless and faceless by choice, where destruction and violence plastered headlines daily.
Evie hadn’t been born there, but the town embraced her once she married into the Burnes family. No one baked a better bumbleberry pie than Evie, the kind with a crust that melted in your mouth and made you hold out your plate for seconds. Painting was her true gift, though it took years for anybody, including Rupe, to discover it. She gave lessons in her attic on Monday and Wednesday afternoons—watercolor, though on occasion she used oils, but only if the student asked. She taught them how to paint streams, evergreens capped in snow, and fields of sunflowers dazed by summer sun. Her paintings were always entered in St. Michael’s annual silent auction and had become one of the church’s largest moneymakers, right along with Rupe’s ninety-day snow removal certificate.
Evie Burnes was a blessing to the town
, a tender heart with a gifted hand. She’d become one of them, and losing her had been tragic. But the not knowing, the never knowing, that’s what still made people shiver when they talked about it. Some said maybe she was too trusting, even for Corville; maybe she saw so much good in people she missed the tiny scraps of evil that clung to most everyone at one time or another.
And maybe that’s what snatched her from them, they said, left a husband and two children behind, broken and grieving, and a town that could not forget.
16
CHAPTER 1
Philly was brutal in July. There were too many sightseers clogging the streets, snapping pictures of Ben Franklin’s house or stuffing shopping bags with giant nickels from souvenir shops. They infiltrated the eateries and made the lunch crowd quadruple.
Quinn Burnes pulled his Audi into the reserved spot, thankful at least he didn’t have to battle a minivan from Idaho for a parking place. Owning a law firm had some advantages, though his sister would disagree, but she disagreed with him on a lot of issues. As a matter of fact, right now she wasn’t speaking to him.
Two days and counting since she’d stopped returning his phone calls, right after she found out he was the attorney on the very controversial personal injury case, Appleton vs. Rothford’s Department Store. He wished she would bend a little and try to understand how a woman might go after $500,000 of compensation after she fell on an escalator. Okay, maybe she was going up the escalator, but still, she’d lost a tooth, suffered image problems, pain and suffering . . . His “save the world social worker” sister refused to hear any of it, calling him a sellout. Maybe he was, but there’d been a time when he’d been just like Annie; trusting, open-hearted, compassionate. Then he’d learned the truth that destroyed it all.