by Meg Maxwell
“I actually came to tell you that I made a decision about my father and the prediction. My dad has business he can’t just blow off this week. Which is crazy because when I was growing up, I would have loved for him to put his personal life before work. Now here I am, insisting he honor his commitments. I’m going to track down his Sarah for him.”
Olivia froze. “You are? I thought the last thing you wanted was for him to find this mystery woman.”
“I’m going to find her for him because I can do it quickly—it’s my job to find people. And when I do find her and he feels absolutely nothing for her, I can prove once and for all that the fortune is a bunch of hooey. We can both get on with our lives.”
Well, that sounded cynical, but everything inside her lit up at the idea of reuniting with her aunt. “So you’ve started the search?” she asked.
“No. I’ll do some research tonight and hit the road tomorrow. I need to make this quick. I have a pending case and people counting on me.”
“I’ll help,” she said. “And come with you to find her.”
“What? Why would you want to do that?”
Olivia took a deep breath. She had to tell him. “Because this green-eyed hairstylist named Sarah with the brush-and-blow-dryer tattoo sounds exactly like my estranged aunt.”
The hazel-green eyes narrowed.
* * *
Disappointment conked him over the head, then fury punched him in the stomach so hard he almost staggered backward.
He stared at Olivia and then turned and stalked away.
“Carson, wait!” she called.
He kept walking, wanting to put as much distance between himself and the lying, swindling Mack women as possible. A daughter, a mother, an aunt. All in cahoots.
“Carson!” she called and he could hear her chasing after him. “Please hear me out!”
He noticed some people stopping on the sidewalks, pausing in their window shopping. Busybodies.
He kept walking. He would not hear her out. There was nothing to hear. Of course she’d said she’d help him find “Sarah.” He had no doubt Olivia Mack knew exactly where her aunt was. This was all probably one great big ruse to make this air of mystery around Sarah’s whereabouts so that his father was pulled in even more. No one wanted what came easily. Damn, they were good at being lying swindlers. They reeled in Edmund Ford and now were playing the game, putting the aunt out of his reach just until the fantasy would take over any issues with reality. At this point, his father was in love with the fantasy. She was his predicted second great love, and that’s all he’d need to know.
“Carson, please!” she called.
He kept walking, the cool February air refreshing against the hot anger spiraling inside him. He’d parked his car on a side street, and when he reached it, he got in and sped off toward Oak Creek.
When he opened the front door of his house, he could smell apple pie in the air. Danny’s sitter had made two pies with her little helper, and he was now napping. He let the sitter know he would be doing some research, then tiptoed into Danny’s room. He watched his son’s chest rise and fall, his own tense shoulders relaxing. Watching his son sleep never failed to relax him.
In his office, he sat down on the brown leather couch and pulled out his cell phone to call his dad and tell him this Sarah person was just Olivia’s aunt and the fortune-teller’s sister. And what a nice parting gift to hook up the family with a wealthy widower.
Cheap shot, Ford, he chastised himself.
He punched in his dad’s cell number.
“Edmund Ford speaking.”
“Dad, I just found out this supposed second great love of yours is the fortune-teller’s sister. Clearly, you’ve been set up.”
“Her sister?” Edmund said.
“Olivia told me the person Madam Miranda described sounds a lot like her estranged aunt. Down to the name, the job, the eye color and the tattoo.”
Silence. His father was a smart man. Clearly he now knew this was a ruse and he probably felt exactly like Carson had on the street—sucker punched upside the head and in the gut.
“That’s great!” Edmund said. “That means we have a last name! Maybe even a Social Security number to help track her down. And a physical description beyond eye color. This is great news.”
Was Carson the crazy one? “Dad, are you telling me you don’t think the fortune-teller made up this crazy prediction to land her sister a wealthy widower?”
“I did this to you, didn’t I?” Edmund said.
“Did what?”
“Made you so cynical.”
“Do you mean realistic?” Carson asked. “And yes, you probably did. But being realistic is a good thing, Dad. Being grounded in reality is a good thing.”
“I’m going to find my Sarah with or without your help.”
Click.
Without or without your help.
He’d heard those same words from Tug Haverhill, his neighbor at their old house in Oak Creek. Tug had two sons around the same age as Carson but he’d always invited Carson to throw a football or to come fishing. When Tug’s younger son had turned eighteen, he’d run off to—according to a note he’d left—“see the world my way.” Apparently, Tug Haverhill had been around a little too much for Brandon Haverhill, insisting Brandon follow the path he’d laid out—a certain college, then business school while working in the family corporation, and he had a great gal in mind for him, too, the daughter of a board member. All that had worked on his older son, but not Brandon.
When Carson had become a private investigator working for the Oak Creek police department, Tug had offered him a small fortune to find his son and bring him home “just to talk.” Tug had told everyone in town that he’d hired Carson to find Brandon, and when Carson and Brandon arrived on the Haverhill doorstep a few days later, word spread that Carson could get the job done. Unfortunately, Brandon had come only to tell his father he’d never live his life any way but his own. His father was furious and Brandon left again. Carson had felt for Tug Haverill, who never did let go of his need to be right. In the end, folks only remembered that Carson had found Brandon when no one else could. He’d been hired to find everyone from long-lost relatives to runaway dogs to deadbeat dads to people like Brandon, who simply walked away from their lives without looking back.
Carson had never got the message. You held on too loosely, you lost people. You held on too tightly, you lost people. There was a “just right,” Carson supposed, but he’d never mastered it. He’d tried both with his ex-wife, then found himself awkwardly saying and doing things that hadn’t felt anywhere near right, and none of that had worked, either. His wife had left.
She left her own newborn, too, his father had reminded him. That’s not about you. That’s about her.
Well, Carson has chosen her, hadn’t he? He’d fallen in love with a woman who had it in her to walk out on her own baby—and supposedly because the baby was a boy and not the girl she wanted. A boy who looked like Carson instead of her and was so frail he needed to be in the NICU for six weeks. In those acid-burning weeks that followed, Carson had pledged to put his son before all else; if he ever fell in love again, it would be with Mary Poppins.
But Mary Poppins was fictional, so Carson had pretty much spent the last year and a half alone.
Also fictional? The nonsense Olivia Mack was spouting about her shrimp po’boys and chocolate cannoli having magical powers. The entire Mack family were clearly nut-jobs and there was no way in hell he was leading to his father to one of them.
Carson stood. Yes. He’d find Sarah Mack himself to keep his father from missing important events this week. He’d assess her and introduce her to his father, who’d feel absolutely nothing for the fortune-teller’s gold-digging sister, and voilà.
He entered the name Sarah Mack into Googl
e, then realized he didn’t even know if Olivia’s aunt was married or not. A simple search brought him many Sarah Macks, but they were all either too young or too old to be Olivia’s aunt. He tried “Sarah Mack, hairstylist” and there were two, but both were under thirty.
It would be a lot easier to find the woman if he knew more about her. That was one of the keys of finding people, he’d learned—you needed to know the little details. Something Carson had discovered early on was that people liked to be reminded of home even when home meant strife or bad memories or they thought they were running as far from home as possible. Once Carson had a sense of what meant home for someone, figuratively speaking, it made it much easier to find them.
And to learn something about this Sarah Mack, he needed some information from Olivia.
He stood up, grabbed his jacket, let the sitter know he’d back by six, then headed for Blue Gulch and Olivia Mack’s little yellow house.
Chapter Four
Olivia sat on the red velvet divan in the back room of her house—her mother’s fortune-telling parlor. After Carson had stalked off, she’d tried to reach him a few times, but he wouldn’t answer his phone. She’d been so disconcerted by telling him the truth about the mystery woman and by his expected reaction that she’d gone home after her shift and thought she’d soak in a bubble bath and try to think about how to go from here. But instead she’d been drawn to her mother’s parlor.
Olivia had always loved and hated this room. Loved it because it was very much her mother. The rich velvets and satins, the small treasures from her travels around the country and the world. Miranda Mack actually did have a crystal ball. She’d found it in a secondhand shop owned by a tiny woman who’d celebrated her hundredth birthday the day Miranda celebrated her seventeenth and had come into the San Antonio store. According to Miranda she’d picked up the ball and it had glowed, and the shop owner had smiled and said Miranda should take it as a birthday gift from one birthday girl to another. It now sat in its bronze holder on the rectangular table in the “fortune nook,” separated from the main room by heavy red velvet drapes. The nook was like a mini version of the main room, full of red velvet and treasures dotting the walls and sidebars. As a girl, Olivia had always felt very safe and protected in the nook.
But then she’d turned seventeen and knew that was when her own gift, passed down from the maternal side of the family, would make itself known, and Olivia had been freaked out. She wanted to be like Aunt Sarah, who claimed not to have a gift and insisted the family abilities must skip around. But Olivia’s ability to heal with food had presented itself, at first, imperceptibly. Sarah always refused to talk about the family gifts and Miranda would shrug, but Olivia always thought there were family secrets being kept from her. If only she could read minds.
Sweetie, her mother’s old cat and her cat now, jumped up on the sofa and curled up beside Olivia. She gave the cat a scratch behind the ears and reached for one of the many photo albums her mother kept on the coffee table. She stared at the last bunch of photos of Aunt Sarah, a tall, pretty woman with wildly curly auburn hair, her signature scarf tied around her neck. In one photo she wore a skin-tight black dress, the little tattoo visible on her ankle. In another photo, Sarah had her arm around Olivia and was smiling at her with such love in her warm green eyes.
What could have happened between the Mack sisters to make Sarah run off? To estrange herself from her only sibling and the niece she’d seemed to care so much about?
There was a knock on the door—the back door, where her mother would meet her clients. Surprised, Olivia jumped up. She moved aside the layers of gauzy curtain at the door to see Dory Drummond wearing a T-shirt, jeans and a long white wedding veil. Dory, recently engaged after a whirlwind courtship, was an old friend and often helped Olivia with cooking prep for her clients or in the food truck to make some extra money.
Dory’s expression was a combination of worry and resignation, but there was a smidgen of something else...but what?
She wants to do what’s right but she isn’t sure what that is.
Whoa. The thought slammed into Olivia so forcefully she took a step back.
Olivia opened the door. “Dory, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to bother you at home. I stopped by the food truck to ask if we could get together to talk sometime soon, but a guy said you were off.” Olivia noticed she held the telltale yellow paper bag from the Hurley’s truck. “I have two smothered, chicken-fried-steak po’boys if you’re interested.”
Olivia smiled. “One of my favorite kinds, especially when I didn’t have to make it.” She gestured at the round table by the window and Dory sat down, Olivia across from her.
Dory stared at the yellow bag. “I’ve been dieting since I’ve been engaged. But you know what? A Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen smothered chicken-fried-steak po’boy sounds amazing, which is why I couldn’t resist ordering it. My mother used to make chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes in her incredible gravy every Sunday night.” Tears poked at Dory’s eyes and Olivia had to blink back her own. The losses of their mothers was something they’d gone through together. But over the past few days, since Dory had gotten engaged, Olivia had the feeling Dory was avoiding her.
“I miss my mother’s cooking, too,” Olivia said, reaching over and giving Dory’s hand a squeeze. Granted, Olivia was the cook in the family, but when Olivia was a little girl, her mother would make her food into smiley faces on her plate, cut holes in pancakes for strawberry eyes and a sausage mouth. And every night for as long as Olivia could remember, her mother would make them both a cup of lemon-ginger tea and they’d watch TV together or sit on the little porch with the cat in Miranda’s lap. Olivia missed that so much, but she still wasn’t ready to have lemon-ginger tea.
Dory squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “Okay, I’m just going to tell you. I have to tell you. I don’t know what to do.”
“Of course you can talk to me,” Olivia said.
“Your mother is the reason I’m here.”
Oh, no. Not again. Carson Ford was enough to deal with where Miranda Mack had been concerned.
Olivia sighed inwardly. She noticed Sweetie pad over and stare up at Dory. “Sweetie is, like, eighteen years old, but I’m afraid she might leap on the table and swipe at your beautiful long veil.”
Dory’s mouth dropped open and she reached up and felt the veil, her expression telling Olivia she’d forgotten it was on. She looked around, clearly embarrassed, took off the veil and folded it neatly into her tote bag.
“It was my mother’s,” Dory explained. “I tried it on at home...to see what it looked like, to know what it would feel like, and I got so... I guess I ran out to go to talk to you without realizing it was on. I must have looked like the biggest idiot running through town in a wedding veil.”
Got so...didn’t sound so good, Olivia thought.
“I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this,” Dory said, her blue eyes full of worry.
“That’s okay, Dory. Really.”
Dory opened up the bag and slid out the po’boy and took a bite. “I’m not supposed to be eating this. Beaufort’s mother made an appointment for me with her nutritionist and personal trainer. I’m only supposed to eat whole foods so I look my best for the wedding.” She took another big bite. More tears poked her eyes.
“Dory, what’s going on?” Olivia asked. Beaufort was her fiancé. From one of the wealthiest families in town, Beaufort had his eye on running for mayor and then state senate.
Dory reached down to pet Sweetie as though to prolong saying why she was here. “I never told you this, Olivia, but I went to see your mother just two days before she died. I asked her to tell me what she saw for me, and she looked me right in the eye and said she adored me like a daughter, but she couldn’t hold back the truth to spare feelings or hopes and that I wasn’t in love wi
th Beaufort Harrington.”
“Oh, no,” Olivia said, her gaze drawn to the three-carat diamond ring sparkling on Dory’s finger. “Did she say more?” When Madam Miranda made her pronouncements, she usually didn’t elaborate. People know the truth about themselves deep down, her mother had always said. I tell the truth. Some people either can’t handle the truth or don’t want the truth and they do as suits. Others can’t deny what’s just below the surface.
“When Beaufort proposed, I was so surprised,” Dory continued. “I thought for sure he’d throw me over for a woman more like his family—rich and cultured and all that. I mean, it was always kind of obvious to me that Beaufort had a crush on me but he’d never asked me out until just two months ago. Then he proposed a few days ago and I said yes...for a few reasons.”
Huh. “Is love one of them?”
Dory hung her head. “My mother didn’t have health insurance. Her care took everything. I’ve been working ’round the clock to pay off those bills and keep the bakery going. Can you imagine, Olivia, losing my mother and my father—and then the family business? Drummond’s Bake Shop has been in my family for seventy-five years. I can’t lose it. I told Beaufort all this, that I was in a heap of trouble financially and that he wouldn’t want to marry someone in such financial straits, and he said he’d make all my financial problems go away.”
“Because he loves you so much?” Olivia asked.
“I’m not sure if he does or not. I always ask why an ambitious, handsome banker from a wealthy family would pick me, of all the women in Blue Gulch, and he just says I’m what he wants.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t have all that much in common. I can’t quite figure out why he did propose.”
“Well, maybe the reason is love,” Olivia said.
Dory nibbled the po’boy. “I don’t think so,” she whispered. “I know this is going to make me sound terrible, but it kind of made me feel okay about saying yes. He doesn’t love me but wants to marry me for some reason. I don’t love him, but need to marry him for a reason. I suppose we’re both doing the other a favor. But...your mom telling me what I already knew—what she must have known I already knew—is throwing me. She must have focused on that for a reason.”