Maybe.
Maybe that’s what she was feeling. But it was hard to tell. There were too many emotions crashing around inside her like out-of-control bumper cars. God. She was married. Her daughter was no more than ten miles from her house. And her husband was engaged. No doubt to a Miss High Society Perfection 2004.
He had his career, a nice life, and their child.
What did Sam have?
New paintbrushes?
“Dammit.”
“Good answer.”
She scowled at him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Naturally. Call me when you’re ready to sign the papers.”
He turned for the street and his black Expedition, parked at the curb. She stopped him cold with one sentence.
“I’m not signing, Jeff. Not until we work something out about Emma.”
He stopped and looked back at her over his shoulder. His dark blue eyes shone with some emotion she didn’t even want to identify. His jaw worked and the muscle there twitched violently a couple of times. This was costing him. But she couldn’t seem to care.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said tightly, then left, without another look at her.
Shaking.
She was shaking so hard her eyeballs were bouncing in her head.
“Sam?” Jo stepped out onto the porch behind her. “Did I hear that right? The weasel-dog’s engaged?”
Sam laughed shortly. “Yep.”
“This just keeps getting weirder.”
“There’s more.”
“What’s left?” Jo demanded.
Sighing, Sam realized that it wasn’t over yet. Now she had to tell her family what had happened.
“What’s wrong?”
She glanced at Jo, opened her mouth, then slammed it shut again. For this part of their conversation, she’d rather be inside where Mr. Bozeman couldn’t “accidentally” overhear them while he was trimming his roses. She turned and went back into the house, with Jo as close as her shadow.
“Okay, you’re starting to worry me now.” Jo grabbed her sister’s arm, pulled her into the room, and then pushed her down onto the sofa. “When a Marconi can’t talk, she’s either dead or—hell, I don’t know anything else that could shut up a Marconi.”
Sam dropped onto the cushion like a stone, bounced, then settled. Her hands in her lap, she inhaled deeply and blew it all out again, ruffling the dark red bangs that hung in her eyes. “Shock will do it.”
“She speaks. A good sign. So tell me.” Jo looked around the familiar, yet empty room. Sunlight slanted through windows, illuminating an inch worth of dust on the coffee table. Nope. No one else was here to help. She was on her own and Sam wasn’t making this easy. Maybe she should go run after Mr. GQ and beat some answers out of him. Mike was better at the tough stuff, though, and she wished her youngest sister were around. “Dammit, Sam, don’t make me beg. What is it?”
“I saw her.”
“Her?” At least she was talking. That was good. She wasn’t making sense, but speech was a step in the right direction. Jo dropped to one knee in front of her sister and looked her dead in the eye. “Her who?”
Sam looked up at her. “My daughter.”
“Oh, my God.”
All the air in the room disappeared. It was the only explanation for the sudden blast of light-headedness that had Jo swaying and then toppling over to land on her butt. The landing jarred her teeth and she shook her head as if that would somehow clear things up. It didn’t. “Where?”
“With him. With Jeff.”
“He’s got her?” She shot a look at the wide-open front door. “I should have chased his ass down.”
“He’s always had her. He’s raised her.”
“But how?” This didn’t make any sense. That baby had been given up for adoption. Turned over to a private attorney and— “How did he—”
“His mother.”
“What?” She shook her head. “ ‘Bitch’ doesn’t seem like a big enough word.”
“It’ll do.” Sam’s gaze sharpened, then focused on Jo’s. “All I know is Emma—that’s her name, Emma—looks just like us. Same eyes, same mouth. Oh God, Jo. She’s mine and she didn’t even know me.”
Jo watched as Sam’s anger faded into misery, swamping her with feelings she’d kept carefully blocked for years. All of them had suffered with her. Wondered with her. And couldn’t come close to actually knowing the pain that Sam had lived with.
“Oh man. I don’t even know what to say.” Jo went up on her knees again and pulled Sam close. Wrapping her arms around her, she held her while Sam sobbed, her body shuddering with the force of a grief she’d never really recovered from.
It wasn’t something anyone in the family talked about. But losing that baby had cost all of them. And none of them had ever forgotten the little girl who should have been a part of their lives. She was there, always. A shadow in the house. A ghost at the table. A phantom on Christmas mornings. She was birthday candles that had never been lit and fairy tales that had never been read.
All of the Marconis felt that absence keenly. Naturally, Sam most of all. Though she tried to hide it from her family, Jo knew that a part of Sam had been missing since that long-ago August 8, when she’d held her baby close and then given her up. Losing her daughter had carved out a slice of her soul that she’d never been able to recover.
“Oh God, look at me.” Sam sniffled and pushed back out of Jo’s arms. A smile that was more sheer determination than anything else crossed her face. Admiration for her younger sister bloomed inside Jo and pride was right behind it. “I just found her and I’m acting like it’s the end.”
“True.” Jo forced a smile to match her sister’s. She’d play this any way Sam wanted to. And anything big sister could do to make things easier, she’d do it. “So what’s next?”
Swiping her fingers across her cheeks, Sam wiped away the last of the tears, then dusted her palms together as if ridding herself of the pain that had caused them. A hesitant smile wavered on her mouth and then strengthened as she sat up straight. “It’s not the end of anything, Jo,” she said and her voice took on a note of fierce resolve. “I’m getting another shot at this. She’s back in my life, and I’m not going to lose her again.”
“Not a chance.”
Sam grinned. It was watery and still a little shaky but it was filled with a kind of joy Jo hadn’t seen in her sister in way too long. “Wait’ll you see her.”
“She’s one of us, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Not a surprise. Marconi genes are hard to defeat.”
Sam nodded. “That’s something Jeff’s going to have to learn.”
Chapter Five
It was too early in the morning to be dealing with this.
Sam took a deep breath and gripped the cardboard cup holding the last of her coffee a little tighter. What she wouldn’t give for a refill.
Grace Van Horn, tiny tyrant, smiled benignly, like some benevolent good fairy. But Sam wasn’t fooled. She’d been down this road before. Three summers ago, in fact, and the nightmares were still close enough to give her cold chills.
Short and trim, Grace was sixty and looked years younger. She was dressed in pale brown slacks and a lemon-colored silk shirt. Her snow-white hair was styled close to her head and her dark eyes sparkled with enough ideas to drive construction crews to strokes. The remodeling magazines Grace held clutched to her chest made Sam want to jump back into the truck and peel out of the driveway, leaving behind nothing but tread marks.
Under the best of circumstances, a summer of working for Grace was trying. Grace, a huge animal lover, gave her menagerie the run of the place and construction crews spent most of their time moving cats out of the way, chasing off dogs, shooing chickens, and trying desperately to keep the goats and sheep from eating the equipment.
But now, Sam didn’t even have the luxury of a concentrated focus. Instead, her brain kept wandering far away from construction, to settle on J
eff and Emma.
She was married.
And having a hard time getting past that.
Plus, trying to think about work when all she wanted was another look at her daughter was nearly impossible.
“I’m so excited to be getting started,” Grace said, sweeping her gaze across the gathered Marconi sisters and their crew, waiting in trucks parked in the driveway. She practically vibrated in her eagerness. “It’s going to be a wonderfully creative summer.”
Someone groaned.
Sam was really afraid it had been her.
When Grace started throwing the word “creative” around, it was time to hide. Since her husband’s death ten years before, Grace had made it her mission in life to transform her home into a miniature version of the Winchester Mystery House.
Rumor had it that in 1881, a medium had convinced Sarah Winchester that she was being haunted by the spirits of those killed by the Winchester rifles her husband’s company produced. The medium had assured Sarah that if she built a grand house for the spirits to visit, she could appease them—and that as long as construction of the house never ceased, Sarah would be safe. And for the next thirty-eight years, it worked, as she kept construction crews working around the clock, seven days a week—weekends and holidays included.
That amazing house, in San Jose, was a rambling mansion filled with doors that opened to nowhere and staircases that led to ceilings. One of the wealthy woman’s favorite pastimes was having her workmen tear rooms apart and redo them over and over again. The day she died, the work crews simply left . . . some of them abandoning half-driven nails in the walls.
Sam understood how they must have felt.
The Winchester house had begun as an eight-room farmhouse and by the time Mrs. Winchester died, there were 160 rooms, decorated with Tiffany stained-glass panes, solid silver doorknobs, and gold chandeliers. After her death, several storerooms filled with priceless treasures had been discovered—the contents never having been used. The house was now a historical monument, drawing thousands of tourists every year.
Grace’s place was on a smaller scale, but not for lack of trying.
Built over a century ago, the big Victorian had stood proudly, as a testament to its owner’s financial status as well as his taste for overblown gingerbread detailing. Then the bottom fell out of the cattle market and the house’s owner sold it to a woman intent on making a different sort of name for herself.
As a cathouse, the Victorian was, arguably, the best bordello north of Los Angeles. Tucked away in the trees, the Victorian had worn its scandalous mantle with pride. Far enough outside of town that the churchgoing ladies could pretend it didn’t exist, it was also close enough that the husbands of those ladies could find the house blindfolded.
Over the years, the house changed hands countless times, and every owner had been determined to leave their own stamp on the place. More land was purchased, forests cleared, and vineyards planted.
The house itself remained pretty much in its original condition, until Grace crowned herself Amateur Architect. Now, new rooms tumbled off to each side of the original structure, giving the impression of a stately old woman spreading the skirt of a dress that didn’t suit her. And with its eye-searing, sunshine-yellow paint, dark green trim, and white accents, it looked as though the old woman in an ugly skirt had been forced to wear too-bright makeup on top of her other indignities.
“It’s so exciting that the work’s beginning,” Grace was saying, “and the summer people will be arriving on Saturday—”
Sam’s attention snapped back to where it had better stay, if she wanted to survive.
“—so we’ll need to keep the construction away from the west wing and—” Grace was still talking.
Oh God. Sam gave herself a mental head slap. She’d forgotten about the summer people. How she could have managed that, she didn’t know. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was her brain being too full of Emma and Jeff. Maybe it was because she just didn’t need one more thing on her list.
Grace’s “summer people” arrived every year about the same time. A handful of women, friends for years, had grouped together to spend their retirement years driving around the country, following the good weather. Whenever they stopped, they did odd jobs or visited friends. Here at Grace’s funny farm, the women would spend their time shearing the sheep and the cashmere and angora goats that had the run of the place, and carding their wool.
At least the summer people would help keep the goats and sheep out of the way. Though Emma would probably love it here with all the animals.
Emma.
Sam rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows and had the distinct impression she wasn’t getting rid of her headache, but massaging it to help it grow.
“—I’ve got some ideas about the back bath, too,” Grace said, then stopped and looked around. “Where’s your father?”
Sam, being the duly elected—if not completely happy about it—representative, spoke up. “Papa will be back tomorrow, Grace. He went to—”
“Las Vegas,” Grace interrupted, nodding, “of course.”
Jo frowned. “How’d you know that?”
Grace’s features went serenely blank. “Why, one of you girls must have told me.”
“When could we have told you that?” Mike asked. “We just got here and—”
Sam cut Mike off before she could finish. How Grace had picked up Papa’s vacation plans on the local gossip train wasn’t really important. “If you want to show me your notes, Grace, we can have the guys get started.”
“Of course. Just come right over here.” Grace walked past them to an iron bench and table set under the sweeping shade of an elm that had to have been at least a hundred years old. She spread the magazines on the table and flipped open the first one to the page she had marked. “If you’ll look at this, dear, you’ll see that I want to go a different route in the back bedroom.”
“Yes, but—” Sam winced and took a long gulp of her too-cool coffee. Oh, she’d be needing gallons of the stuff to deal with Grace. They’d talked about this job just three days ago and everything had been settled. The wood had already been ordered. Scratch that, she thought, already dreading her phone call to the lumber company. Of course, the upside to that was they were used to dealing with Grace, too. The people at Wright Wood were probably expecting her call.
Shooting a desperat “help me” look at Jo, Sam frowned when her older sister deliberately glanced away and did everything but whistle and rock on her heels. Fine, Sam thought. So much for solidarity among sisters. Clearly, she was on her own.
Grace talked and Sam made notes even while her brain went off on a tangent all its own. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Emma. About Jeff. It was all so surreal. Nine long years and then suddenly they were both back in her life. She had to find a way to make this work. To reach the child she’d thought lost to her forever.
To survive Grace long enough to get to know her daughter.
“I think a parquet floor is the way to go in the new library.”
Oh boy. “Parquet, uh-huh.” Sam groaned and kept writing.
A cold wind blew up and rattled the leaves overhead. She tried not to think of it in “foreboding” terms. After all, once the disaster hit, it was just boding . . . nothing fore about it.
“I’ll get the boys to unload,” Jo said, still studiously avoiding Sam’s gaze as she stalked across the lawn toward the drive.
Sam sighed and called back, “Tell ’em it’s the east wing this summer.”
“Right.” Jo lifted one hand and kept going.
They’d have a talk later about this. But for now, Grace was still talking and it paid to listen up when she was on a roll.
“If you girls want to get started on the library, you could have some of the men start on the second kitchen. We’ll need new cabinets and I’m thinking a purple granite countertop.”
Purple granite? “Sure, Grace. We can do that.”
Gra
ce tapped one finger thoughtfully against her chin. “Or maybe marble. We’ll have to see.” Then she stopped and grinned conspiratorially. “It’s going to be a wonderful summer, Samantha.” Slowly, though, her grin faded as she took a closer look. “Honey, are you okay?”
“Fine.” Sam could lie when she had to. She’d just never been very convincing. Now Mike . . . there was a woman with a flair for lying. She’d invented more stories than Mark Twain on his best day.
“If you’ll excuse me for saying so, that’s a load of horse hockey.”
Sam blinked in surprise. This was the closest Grace had ever come to actually swearing. A memorable moment. Laughing, she said, “Grace, you never cease to amaze me.”
“That’s very nice, dear, but an evasion nicely said is still an evasion.”
How did Mike pull off the lying so well that no one ever called her on it? Sam was going to have to take lessons. “Honest. I’m fine. A little tired, maybe.” Comes from lying wide awake in your bed all night, with visions of your ex-husband dancing in your head.
Sugarplums—whatever the hell they were—would have been much safer.
And to clear that picture from her mind she spoke up fast before Grace could work up a full head of steam. “You know what, Grace? Jo will be taking care of the paneling in the library, why don’t you go show her what you have in mind?”
Distracted, Grace snatched at the suggestion like a kid grabbing for the last piece of candy in a bowl. “Good idea.”
Sam watched her go and tried to feel guilty. She failed. She’d just tossed her older sister to the lions and all she felt was a small twist of satisfaction. That said something about her, didn’t it? But what did that matter when she could watch Jo face the determined little woman like a condemned man waiting for the first bullet to strike flesh?
Life was good.
“Does my mommy want me now?”
Jeff scraped one hand across his face, then looked at his little girl. This had been so much harder than he’d ever thought it would be. But then, that wasn’t really a fair statement, was it? Because he’d never imagined having to have this conversation.
And Then Came You Page 6