A Family Affair: The Wish: Truth in Lies, Book 9
Page 23
Maybe Alec had already found his own she-devil.
So what?
Tula Rae yanked Derry from thoughts of Alec. “Tomorrow, we’ll make sushi, like my third husband, Raymond Nudel, taught me to do.”
“Which husband was Italian?”
“Cici, number four.” She smacked a loud kiss with three fingers. “Best stromboli you ever tasted.”
And thus continued the culinary education of Derry Rohan.
* * *
Katherine Rosemary Cintar spoke complete sentences at age two. By age three she read Golden Books and at seven she competed in the county spelling bee against twelve- and thirteen-year-olds.
Her parents, eager for her to utilize all possible brain power on more cerebral tasks, excused her from the mundane duties of picking up the litter of shirts and jeans on her bedroom floor, loading her own cereal bowl in the dishwasher, or cleaning her toothpaste spit out of the bathroom sink. The education of Katherine Cintar continued as she learned French, Spanish, and Japanese, all introduced before age eight.
Her younger sister, Janie, though not quite as academically inclined as Katherine, possessed more street smarts. She learned early on that parents could be conned. A pretend sore throat got Mom to rush to Fresh Mart for popsicles and chocolate ice cream. A crying spell would convince Dad that his little girl really did need an extra half hour of television to unwind.
And on life went, with Katherine, aka Kiki (because her sister couldn’t spit out that many syllables at age three), believing she would be the first female president, and by virtue of this position, never have to pick up her own socks. Janie grew determined to create a job where she made and changed the rules.
No one faulted Sam and Cyn Cintar’s overzealous expectations for their daughters. The girls were smart and special. But everyone traded whispered bets on the inevitable downslide of the Cintar sisters.
Why?
Because smart still needed to wash a dish and take out the garbage. And savvy shouldn’t be excused from vacuuming carpets and scrubbing toothpaste from the sink. Kiki and Janie’s reality shock hit three years ago when their parents recognized their mistakes and attempted to teach them basic living skills.
Kiki resisted. Janie cried.
Sam got angry and Cyn, the weakest link, dropped from parent monitor to child facilitator, making the rules and then, more often than not, completing the tasks she’d assigned.
Until now.
Cyn perched on the craggy rocks of Ogunquit, the wind sifting through her red-tinged hair, canvas on her lap, palette at her side. Derry bought her the artist’s tools because as she said, “How do you know what you’re good at if you don’t start trying something?”
Last week, inspired by the torment of the ocean, Cyn attempted to write a few lines of poetry. Disastrous. She’d turned the lines into the opening of a short story, which, while not half-bad, wasn’t anything she’d sign her name to either.
The sky rolled into the ocean, lapping over it in calm waves of color, as seagulls and fishing boats trolled along the coast. The perfect artist’s backdrop. But Cyn knew before she took the first stroke that she was no artist, knew too that coming here had nothing to do with finding herself and everything to do with working up the courage and a game plan to tell Sam the truth about these last five months. But she couldn’t explain that to Derry or Shea, so she just pretended to really care about discovering her untapped talents.
All she really wanted to do was go back to the way her life used to be. Before the lies.
And knowing that only made her thoughts race faster, center on the current crisis, which happened to be Kiki and Janie’s angry silences. Janie had called twice, once to ask what spot clean meant and another time to inform her that the shower had clogged again. Kiki called one time, with nothing to say, a call most certainly initiated by her father.
And Sam? He said less and less each night. Did he suspect? Had he uncovered something? She’d been so careful…
“Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?”
She looked up to see a man standing a few feet from her. He was tall and tanned, fifty or so, with cinnamon eyes and a handsome boyishness about him. He carried a very high-tech-looking camera in one hand and a tripod in the other
“No, of course not.” She slid along the rock. “I was just getting ready to leave anyway.”
“Don’t go.” His smile slipped over her, wide and disarming. “I was watching you just now, sitting so still, your hair blowing behind you, the sky almost the exact same shade as your jacket, and I thought what a beautiful shot that would make.” The smile spread. “I’m always in search of the perfect picture.”
“You’re a photographer?”
He nodded, his thick, sandy hair blowing about his forehead. “Magazine covers when I’m on the clock, the real world when I’m not.”
They both laughed and he sat beside her on the huge rock. “Steve,” he said, extending a hand.
“Cynthia Cintar. My friends call me Cyn.” She shook his smooth, uncallused hand.
“Cyn then.” He rested the tripod next to him. ”You’re not from here, are you?”
“No, just visiting. I’m from Northern Virginia, Reston, actually.”
He removed the cap from his camera lens, inspected the lens. “You here by yourself?”
“No, I came with two of my friends. It was a last-minute idea, not planned at all, which is so unlike me, but we decided it was something we really wanted to do and here we are.”
His gaze slid over the ring on her left finger. “No complaints from your husband?”
“Not really.” She forced a small laugh and said, “My daughters were the ones who had the issues. They’re teenagers, what can I say? They only live in the world of their own needs, no one else’s.”
“How long are you here?”
“Until the second week in October.”
“Perfect time. Are you staying nearby?”
“We’re at The Bird’s Nest, a quarter mile or so from here.”
“Tula Rae’s place.”
“You know her?”
“I know of her.” He laughed. “Everybody knows about Tula Rae.”
“She’s a character, all right. I’ve never met anyone quite like her.”
“Just be careful what you eat.”
“What do you mean?”
“You haven’t heard the stories?”
“No.”
“It’s all hearsay, but half the town thinks it’s the truth. Then there’s the other half that thinks she’s Mother Teresa in Spandex.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They say she poisoned one of her husbands.”
“What?”
“Sliced up another with a cleaver. Drowned one in a tub.” He adjusted the lens of his camera, closed one eye, and added matter-of-factly, “And shot one at point-blank range.”
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Copyright
Copyright 2016 by Mary Campisi
A Family Affair: The Wish 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: 978-1-942158-14-1
About the Author
Mary Campisi writes emotion-packed books about second chances. Whether contemporary romances, women's fiction, or Regency historicals, her books all center on belief in the beauty of that second chance. Her small town romances center around family life, friendship, and forgiveness as they explore the issues of today’s contemporary women.
Mary should have known she'd become a writer when at age thirteen she began changing the ending to all the books she read. It took several years and a number of jobs,
including registered nurse, receptionist in a swanky hair salon, accounts payable clerk, and practice manager in an OB/GYN office, for her to rediscover writing. Enter a mouse-less computer, a floppy disk, and a dream large enough to fill a zip drive. The rest of the story lives on in every book she writes.
When she's not working on her craft or following the lives of five adult children, Mary's digging in the dirt with her flowers and herbs, cooking, reading, walking her rescue lab mix, Cooper, or, on the perfect day, riding off into the sunset with her very own hero/husband on his Harley Ultra Limited.
If you would like to be notified when Mary has a new release, please sign up at http://www.marycampisi.com/book/book-release-mailing-list/
Mary has published with Kensington, Carina Press, and The Wild Rose Press and she is currently working on the next book in her very popular Truth in Lies series, the A Family Affair books. This family saga is filled with heartache, betrayal, forgiveness and redemption in a small town setting.
For more information
@MaryCampisi
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https://www.marycampisi.com
mary@marycampisi.com
Other Books by Mary Campisi:
Contemporary Romance:
Truth in Lies Series
Book One: A Family Affair
Book Two: A Family Affair: Spring
Book Three: A Family Affair: Summer
Book Four: A Family Affair: Fall
Book Five: A Family Affair: Christmas
Book Six: A Family Affair: Winter
Book Seven: A Family Affair: The Promise
Book Eight: A Family Affair: The Secret
Book Nine: A Family Affair: The Wish
Book Ten: A Family Affair: The Gift
Book Eleven: A Family Affair: The Weddings
Book Twelve: A Family Affair: The Return
That Second Chance Series
Book One: Pulling Home
Book Two: The Way They Were
Book Three: Simple Riches
Book Four: Paradise Found
Book Five: Not Your Everyday Housewife
Book Six: The Butterfly Garden
That Second Chance Boxed Set 1-3
That Second Chance Boxed Set 4-6
The Betrayed Trilogy
Book One: Pieces of You
Book Two: Secrets of You
Book Three: What’s Left of Her: a novella
The Betrayed Trilogy Boxed Set
The Sweetest Deal
Regency Historical:
An Unlikely Husband Series
Book One - The Seduction of Sophie Seacrest
Book Two - A Taste of Seduction
Book Three - A Touch of Seduction, a novella
Book Four - A Scent of Seduction
An Unlikely Husband Boxed Set
The Model Wife Series
Book One: The Redemption of Madeline Munrove
Young Adult:
Pretending Normal