Family Blessings (Cisco Family)

by Fern Michaels

  Hanny thought about her brother’s words. A first time for everything. It was so true. She bit down on her bottom lip. The urge to cry was so strong, she bit down harder and tasted her own blood. “You’re right, Sam. There’s a first time for everything.”

  She jumped up, jamming her hands into the pockets of her khaki slacks.

  “You look like you lost some weight, Hanny,” Sara said.

  “Well, I didn’t. It’s your imagination. I eat like a horse,” Hannah lied. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a solid meal.

  Sara blinked, her expression confused. “Hey, I just made a comment, okay? You don’t have to bite my head off.”

  “Sorry, Sara. I’m just worried,” Hannah said.

  “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s pile into my Range Rover and go to town to see if Cisco is there with Ezra. I’m thinking they’d both go there first thing to see if they could help. C’mon, guys, let’s go,” he said to the anxious dogs. “It’s time to find Cisco.”

  Chapter Two

  SAM CISCO STEERED HIS SUV TO A SLOW CRAWL, tapping the horn ever so lightly to urge the throngs of people to step aside so he could park his vehicle. He wanted to concentrate on the tragedy and do what he could to help, but his thoughts were with his young wife, who was preparing to return to Europe. Or so she said.

  From early childhood on, his sisters had told him, usually on a daily basis, that he was stupid, and they were smart. He knew then just the way he knew now, that they were just words. Was he stupid? Why didn’t he see this coming? After he’d married Sonia he’d been happier than a pig in a mud-hole. So where did it all go wrong? He wished he knew. Maybe Hanny and Sara could tell him. Then again, did he really want to hear the two of them bash him the way they always did even though it was good-natured? He hated telling Cisco because she loved Sonia like a daughter. Would she blame him the way he was blaming himself?

  Sam was shaken out of his reverie when Hanny screeched in his ear. “There’s a parking place. Move, Sam!”

  Sara looked around in awe. “I think the whole town is here in the square.” Everywhere as far as the eye could see, little knots of people with clipboards gestured and pointed. A small town coming together to help each other. All the stores were open, even though it was Sunday, and they were supposed to be closed. The doors of John Mitchell’s hardware store were wide-open. He was handing out rakes, shovels, and wheelbarrows, barrels of nails and hammers, and anything else people needed. Sara knew there would be no charge. John Mitchell was like that.

  At Finnegan’s Emporium, workers were handing out work gloves, sweat bandannas, and anything people asked for. Again, there would be no charge, just as there would be no charge for the sandwiches and coffee from Mabel’s Diner.

  Freddie barked as she pawed the window in the cargo hold. Hanny turned around to see why the golden retriever was barking and saw Cisco and Ezra standing next to the parish priest, Father Drupieski, and Hiram Holloway, the town’s mortician. “There’s Cisco and Ezra! They’re alive! Will you park this damn thing and let me out already!”

  The Trips hit the ground running. They were children again, frightened out of their wits just the way they had been frightened out of their wits when they were little, and the only person who could make things right was Cisco. They hugged and kissed her, squeezing and pummeling her as they hung on to her arms for dear life. The dogs barked and whined to be included. Everyone obliged.

  “The cavalry has arrived,” Ezra said happily.

  When Cisco could catch her breath, she said, “Freddie found my yellow teakettle, and Hugo found a string of Christmas lights. And they work. So, we didn’t lose everything.” She looked around, noticing for the first time that the Trips were partner-free. “Where are your spouses?”

  The Trips eyed one another and suddenly started asking questions about what they could do to help. Cisco frowned, and with a nudge from Ezra refrained from asking any further questions.

  “Ezra will tell you what to do. I’m going with Hiram over to the mortuary to help…to do whatever I can for the families…of…of those who…who didn’t make it. Father Stanley knows what has to be done.” She smiled up at the priest, who was as old as she was. He’d married her son Jonathan and Margie, and christened the Trips. At least once a month he came for dinner and always brought a posy with him. Only Ezra knew that in private she called her old friend Drupi. “Do everything he says.” She squared her shoulders imperceptibly, and said, “This is our little town. Our roots are here. Our friends need us right now.”

  The Trips watched Cisco move off. This was so like their grandmother. Her beloved home, their home, too, for many, many years, was gone, and she was only thinking about helping others.

  Everyone knew the town of Larkspur would have withered and died if Cisco hadn’t moved her candy factory and the company’s corporate offices here over her son’s objections. And she’d never asked the town government or the townspeople for a thing in return, just a day’s work for a day’s pay. Even when there were no job openings, if someone in town needed a job, Cisco created one for the applicant. She also provided health care, pension plans, and wonderful working conditions, as well as free Cisco Candies for the townsfolk.

  Ezra looked down at the clipboard he was holding in his hand with no idea how or where he came by it. The writing was his own, so he must have made a list at some point. He started to rattle off instructions. The Trips listened intently, then scattered to do Ezra’s bidding. Freddie and Hugo stayed at his side.

  Father Drupieski turned away, out of the sun. “I must be going, too, Ezra. I’m needed over at the church. Please tell Loretta I will formally thank her for her monetary help next Sunday. There’s no way this little town could…”

  Ezra placed one of his big hands on the priest’s arm. “Whatever you need, it’s yours. Loretta said everything was to go through your hands. It’s not that she doesn’t like the Red Cross, she does. She just thinks this is our little town, and we take care of our own.”

  The old priest nodded. There were a few in town who thought Ezra had hitched his star to Cisco’s wagon because of her money. He knew better. Ezra was almost as wealthy as Loretta Cisco, having made his fortune ranching and drilling oil in Wyoming. He did almost as much for the town as Loretta did but always quietly and anonymously. He even doubted Loretta knew that Erza was paying for at least a dozen different young people’s college educations. She probably didn’t know he had bought Louis Merriman a new tractor, and he knew for a fact that she didn’t know he’d paid for Bertha Appleton’s heart surgery three months ago. Hells bells, even Bertha didn’t know who’d paid for her surgery. Every Sunday he felt it was his duty to announce the mysterious benefactor’s good deeds from the pulpit without announcing a name.

  Father Stanley Drupieski gave himself a mental shrug as he said good-bye to Ezra and headed for his little white church, which was badly in need of a coat of paint. The paint didn’t matter; what mattered was giving comfort to those who were waiting for him. With the robust checks from Loretta and Ezra, he could now make and fulfill promises to those in need.

  Dr. Zack Kelly looked just as cranky and tired as his companion, slash, best friend, and brother-in-law, Dr. Joel Wineberg. “I don’t know why we’re even bothering to go out to the valley. It’s late, everyone will have eaten and be packing up to go home. Tell me again why we’re doing this?” He yanked at his tie and threw it in the backseat. “In addition, no one goes to a barbecue/picnic in a suit, shirt, and tie. We’re going to look like misfits.”

  Long years of familiarity allowed Joel to vent. “Just shut up, Zack. We’re going because we promised we’d go. Right now I am number one on Sara’s shit list. I need to correct that, and this picnic is the start.” He, too, yanked at his tie and tossed it over his shoulder. For some reason Zack looked pleased at his friend’s words. He stared at him suspiciously.

  “Oh, yeah. You didn’t tell me there was trouble in Paradise. I bet you five b
ucks I can top whatever the hell you’re going to tell me. Fire away, buddy.”

  Joel slumped down in his seat, his long legs extended. “I haven’t seen, that’s as in seen, Sara in about ten days. She’s in bed when I get home, which is around midnight, and she’s asleep when I get up at five. Sometimes I think she’s pretending. Gone are the days when she waited up for me and got up to cook me breakfast. Every kid within a hundred-mile radius seems to be sick. The life of a pediatrician is not an easy one.

  “I have an associate and can’t see my way to taking on another one. I need more hours in the day. That boat business is killing me. I have to tell Sara, and I can’t get up the nerve. Everything started to go wrong when we began those night classes.

  “Sara cooks dinner. Well, she did. The problem was, I was never home to eat it. She’d save it, but it would be dried out by the time I got to it. Now she doesn’t even cook. She used to leave me little notes with smiley faces. She doesn’t do that anymore either. Twice she used the D word. Do you believe that?

  “And it’s all because of that damn boat, Zack. I wish now we’d never bought it.”

  Zack shuddered at the misery in his friend’s voice. Every man alive knew what the D word meant. Divorce. So far Hanny hadn’t said the D word out loud, but he’d seen it in her eyes. She was just as fed up with him as Sara was with Joel.

  “Yeah, sure I believe it. We work ten hours a day, then take all those nautical classes into the night. Look at it from their perspective. They’re alone all the time. If it’s any consolation to you, Joel, my good friend, my own wife seems to have some issues, too. I’m sure she and Sara commiserate on a daily basis. I’m starting to think plumbing might have been a better business to go into than the medical profession.”

  Outrage registered on Joel’s face. “Are you kidding? Plumbers get called out in the middle of the night. I can’t see myself crawling under a house to check pipes. I only told you all that thinking you might have some advice.”

  Zack took his eyes off the road for a second. “Well, you thought wrong, pal. Hanny should have called me on the cell phone by now. The truth is, she never calls me anymore. We’re old married men now. The bloom is off the rose. I read that in a magazine one time.” He screwed up his face as though he were in pain.

  Joel reached over to adjust the heating unit. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? You know what else,” he said, lowering his voice to a self-conscious hiss, “I wanted sex three days ago. Sara jabbed her elbow so hard into my ribs I have a bruise the size of a grapefruit.”

  Zack clucked his tongue in sympathy, his own expression as miserable as his friend’s. “I guess you told me that to see if I’d confide in you, right? Well, guess what, I haven’t had sex in over a month. We’re young, we’re supposed to be screwing our brains out like rabbits do. Something went wrong here, Joel, and I don’t think we can blame it all on the boat. I feel undercurrents here,” he said dramatically. “Now, are you happy that I spilled my guts?”

  “No.”

  Zack floundered. “Maybe we should talk to Sam. He knows the girls better than anyone. Maybe he can offer some suggestions. Look, I know you love Sara as much as I love Hannah. We have to get back on track here before it’s too late.”

  Joel hooted his disgust at his best friend’s suggestion. “And you really think old Sam is going to be on our side? You’re thinking this is a guy thing, right? Like we’re all going to share and make things peachy perfect. Just get that thought right out of your head, buddy. He’s one of three. A triplet. They’re linked by some invisible bond you and I have no clue about. We’re on our own.”

  “Now that scares the hell out of me,” Zack said as he pressed his foot on the gas, blasted the horn, and swerved around a tractor trailer so he could make the turnoff that would lead him to Cisco’s house in the valley.

  “Down the hill, and up the rise, and then we reach grandmother’s house,” he said, his voice chilly with anxiety. “I wonder who got hit with that tornado. I heard about it from one of the nurses as I was leaving the hospital, but she didn’t know the details of what happened.”

  “Whoa,” Joel said, staring out the windshield from the top of the rise. “It’s gone, Zack! The house is gone!”

  “Oh, my God!” Zack stopped the car and got out. “Ezra’s house is still standing. Man, that tornado must have cut a pretty wide swath. I wouldn’t think a house down that low would get hit. That has to mean every house on that back road got leveled. Cisco…You don’t think…Nah, nothing happened to her. We would have heard. Ezra’s house is still standing. We should check it out. We are doctors. If there’s anything good about this, it’s that the Trips weren’t heading this way till around noon. That means they’re all right.” He turned to look at Joel’s pale face. He snapped his fingers. “We would have heard something otherwise. Look alive here, buddy. I’m telling you, they’re all right. I just know it.”

  “I loved that house, I really did. It was so homey, so comfortable, so lived in. You just knew when you opened the door, you were welcome. How could something so wonderful, so right, be gone like that?” Joel asked.

  The two men looked at one another, their eyes miserable. Each was thinking how right and wonderful their marriages were in the beginning. How full of warmth and laughter they were.

  “I feel like bawling for some reason,” Zack said as he switched gears to drive to the top of the second hill, where Ezra’s house stood. It only took them five minutes to realize no one was home.

  “Come on, we’re going to town,” Zack said, getting into the car.

  It was midnight when the clan gathered in Ezra’s heated sun-room, which had a view of the entire valley. Cisco, her snow-white topknot wiggling precariously on top of her head, looked from one to the other of the triplets. “You are more than welcome to stay. We certainly have enough beds and food. Ezra is defrosting tomorrow’s dinner as we speak. I think we all did a good job today. Would anyone like some blackberry brandy? Ezra made it himself.” For the first time in her life, Cisco hoped her family would turn down her invitation to stay overnight. She couldn’t ever remember feeling as tired or sad as she felt now. All she wanted to do was go to bed, pull up the covers, and sleep for a week.

  “Joel and I have to leave, Cisco,” Zack said. “We have to be at the hospital at six. We both appreciate the invitation, though. We can come back next weekend to help if you need us.”

  Sara looked across the patio to where her husband was standing. “Hanny and I are staying here. What about you, Sam?”

  “I’ll let you know in a minute. I have to call Sonia.” He ran into the house and called his own house. Either Sonia was gone, or she was sleeping. He prayed she was sleeping and would pick up the phone. After the fifteenth ring, his face white, he trotted out to the patio. “I’m staying,” he said curtly.

  “I guess you guys better get going,” Hanny said, in a voice so cold it could have chilled milk. She tugged at the bright red turban covering her head. “You certainly don’t want to be late for morning rounds.” She waved airily as she tugged at Sara’s arm. “Come and help me put sheets on the beds.”

  Ezra pinched Cisco’s arm lightly and whispered in her ear. “This might be a good time to make our little announcement.”

  Cisco nodded. “Before you leave, Ezra and I have something to tell you. I’m sorry your father isn’t here to hear it too, but he refused to leave the cleanup brigade. Ezra asked me to marry him, and I said yes. The wedding will take place on Christmas Day.”

  She held out her arms expecting the Trips to step into her waiting embrace. Instead all she heard were some low-voiced comments that sounded like congratulations. And then the girls left the room, and Sam said he was going back to town to help his father.

  Cisco eyed the two disheveled young men in wrinkled suits standing by the railing. “Does either one of you want to say anything?” she asked briskly.

  Zack ran his hand through his hair. “Ah…no, Cisco, not at this time. I
’m real happy for you and Ezra. Christmas Day is a great day for a wedding. At least you’ll never forget your anniversary date.”

  “I’m real sorry about your house, Cisco. I know what it means to you and the Trips. I’m sure the builders will be able to rebuild it just the way it was. I think I’ll say good night now,” Joel said.

  Cisco and Ezra accepted hugs from the two young doctors before they followed them out to the driveway. Their good-byes were quiet and subdued. Ezra wrapped his arm around Cisco’s shoulder as they watched the red taillights of the departing car until they were nothing more than pinpoints in the dark night. “Morning will be time enough to talk about this, Loretta. I’ll run a bath for you. Would you like some hot chocolate or perhaps a cup of chamomile tea?”

  Cisco nodded. “You make the tea, Ezra, and I’ll run my own bath. I’m so glad you never sold this house. If you had, we’d be living in a tent right now.” Her voice was beyond weary when she said, “Tell me again why you didn’t sell it when you moved into the cottage with me.”

  “You told me to keep it in case you ever got mad at me so I’d have a place to go.” He chuckled at the memory. Cisco just nodded as she made her way up the steps, Freddie and Hugo behind her.

  Cisco’s thoughts weren’t on why Ezra had kept the house or her part in his decision to hold on to it. Nor were her thoughts on her beloved little house in the valley. Her thoughts were on the Trips and the trouble she saw in their eyes. But, as Ezra said, tomorrow was another day.

  And tomorrow, she was shutting down the factory and requesting that all employees turn out to help with the cleanup. They had to get things back to normal as soon as possible. Did it really matter if some of the candy shipments were late? No, it did not matter. Family and friends always had to come first no matter what.

  Cisco rubbed at her temples as the tub filled with hot water. She wished she had some bubble bath. When was the last time she’d taken a bubble bath? She couldn’t remember. In the great scheme of things, it simply wasn’t important.