“He was supporting her?”
“Evidently quite well.”
“How did he manage to hide that during the investigation?”
“Cash payments every month to her mother.” Jesse leaned back in his chair. “Which I’m assuming stopped once the investigation began.”
“They had to have shown up somewhere,” Ellie insisted.
“Your father’s business brought in a ridiculous amount of money. You of all people must know that.”
“Yes, but I made a lot of money working for him and I had to account for all of it.”
“I know, but you’re honest, and he wasn’t. It appears that he managed to hide a lot over the years.”
“So what does this girl have to do with me?”
“Put bluntly, your father is asking that you take her in.”
“Take her in? What does that mean, take her in?”
“Her mother has no family and her father is in prison. Clifford has asked that you agree to become her legal guardian.”
“You mean, have her live with me?” She choked back a laugh. “Is he delusional?”
“She’s been staying with the Foresters but that was supposed to be temporary, and quite frankly, they don’t want her. They’re turning her over to the state to put her into foster care on Monday if she has nowhere else to go. And other than you, there is no one, no place, for her to go.”
“Well, she’s not coming here, either.” Ellie got up and began to pace. “My father has colossal nerve to even think of asking me to raise his … his child.”
She slammed a hand on the back of the chair she’d been sitting in.
“What is wrong with that man, anyway?”
Jesse sat back, apparently willing to let Ellie blow off as much of her anger as she needed to.
“And who is this girl? How old is she?”
“She’s thirteen.” He got up and reached for a file on his desk. “Her name is—”
“Don’t tell me her name. Don’t tell me anything about her. I don’t want to know. He’s crazy if he thinks for one minute that I’d …”
Jesse closed the file and Ellie walked into the hall, paced some more, then came back into the office.
“Did you speak with my father directly?”
“No, only Max. He said that both he and your father had tried to contact you by mail but you hadn’t responded.”
Ellie thought about the letters she’d received—two from her father and one from Max’s law firm—and tossed away. She groaned and sat for a few seconds, got up, paced once more, then sat again.
“Where is this girl now?” she asked.
“She’s with Max and his family, but they’re not willing to keep her. Actually, they’re supposed to be leaving on a cruise tomorrow and want her gone today. Max sounded extremely put out that you hadn’t contacted him to make arrangements for her, so that he and his family had to share their Thanksgiving Day with her.” Jesse paused, then asked, “Is Max as big a jerk as I make him sound?”
“Bigger,” she told him. “You have no idea.”
“Oh, I have some idea. He said having her at dinner yesterday put a damper on their family’s holiday. That she was sullen and antisocial.”
“Oh, gee. She was sullen? Really?” Ellie snorted, her sense of fair play tweaked. “Ya think it might have had something to do with the fact that her mother’s dead, her father’s in prison, and her choice is between foster care or a half sister she’s never met? Can’t imagine why she wasn’t in more of a party mood.”
“That was pretty much my reaction, too. It can’t be easy for this kid.”
“Don’t make me feel sorry for her.” Ellie put both hands over her face and groaned. “Jesse, I don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this.”
“I understand. I don’t know how I’d feel in your shoes. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Ellie paced a little more and wished she could turn the clock back to early this morning when she had nothing on her mind except Cameron and memories of their night together. She hadn’t had time to process it—needed time to process it—but here she was, being asked to decide the fate of a hitherto unknown girl. Her sister.
Her little sister who just lost her mother and probably didn’t have much of a relationship with her father and was probably scared shitless about what was going to happen to her.
“All right.” She sighed. “What’s her name?”
“Gabrielle. She’s in ninth grade and she—”
“I need to think.”
“Want some coffee while you do?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Ellie sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She did not want to be responsible for her father’s love child. She didn’t know anything about teenage girls other than that she’d been one once. She had no idea where she’d go or what she’d be doing once her time in St. Dennis was over. How could she take on the responsibility of someone else? A stranger? A kid, for God’s sake. Keeping Dune had been a big step for her.
No, she did not want this girl—this half sister—to come to St. Dennis. No. No, no, no.
She picked up the file that Jesse had left on his desk and opened it. Inside were the faxed letters from Max on the letterhead of Forester, Fox and Oxenhauer, the DNA report, and the birth certificate of Gabrielle Amelia Hanson naming Marilyn Jean Hanson as her mother and Clifford Andrew Chapman as her father.
Amelia was Ellie’s paternal grandmother’s name. Nice move on Marilyn’s part.
The last item in the file was a photocopy of a photograph of a young girl with dark bangs that fell like fringe over her forehead almost to her eyes. She wore a floppy hat and sunglasses and a big smile. Her cheeks hadn’t yet lost their childhood roundness and her face still held a semblance of innocence. Ellie sat and held the picture in front of her.
She didn’t know this girl, didn’t want to. She didn’t want to share her house with Gabrielle Hansen—or did she go by Chapman? She didn’t want this girl’s problems to become her own. Ellie was just starting to come to terms with her past and still had no idea what the future held. Did she really need a teenager at this stage of her life? What did she know about raising a child?
But what she did know about the foster care system in this country could fill volumes.
Three years ago she’d done some free PR for a private organization that was promoting adoption of kids who were caught in the system through no fault of their own. She’d wept when she watched the film they produced, showing how kids got sucked into foster care and how so few ever got out. How, as they grew older and older, they became less and less adoptable. How they were kicked out of the system at eighteen and how many of them disappeared into the vortex of street life.
Could she really sentence a young girl—her own sister, for crying out loud—to such a future?
On the other hand, what about her life, the life she was trying to build for herself?
Crap.
Jesse returned to the office, a mug of coffee on a tray along with sweetener and a container of skim milk.
“We’re out of half-and-half,” he apologized, and held up the small carton of milk. “This is the best I could do in a pinch.”
“It’s fine, thanks, Jesse.” Preoccupied, Ellie fixed her coffee and sipped without tasting.
“Why don’t you go home, take a few hours to think things over?” Jesse suggested.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ve already made up my mind. I really don’t want to do this, Jesse.”
“I totally understand. I’ll contact Max this morning and tell him to make the arrangements with child services.”
“No. To bring her to St. Dennis.”
“I thought you just said you didn’t want to take her.”
“I don’t. I don’t know her, and for all we know, she really is a sullen, antisocial little brat and I’ll be at my wits’ end before the weekend is over and I’ll wish I’d t
old my father to go screw himself. But I know that foster care can be really, really rough. I’ve never heard a good thing about it. I can’t in good conscience send this kid into that without at least giving her a chance. What’s happened to her to turn her life inside out isn’t her fault and it isn’t fair,” she told him, “and I know all about that.”
She stood. “So go ahead, call Max and tell him I said yes. Get whatever paperwork we’ll need. But tell him I want her driven down here in a hired car with all her things at his expense. He can afford it. After all the money my father paid him over the years, he can at least have the decency to do better than a bus ticket.”
“Do you want to talk to him yourself? Make the arrangements …?”
“No. I don’t want to talk to him. God forbid I should sound sullen or distracted. I might ruin his cruise.”
It was almost four in the afternoon when Jesse’s SUV pulled up in front of Ellie’s house. Max had the girl and everything she owned dropped off at Jesse’s law office, either because he wanted to annoy Jesse or because he felt it lent some greater legality to the situation.
To ease her nerves, Ellie had taken Dune on a long walk, then she’d called Carly.
“Hey, I was just thinking about calling you to see how Thanksgiving dinner—” Carly began when she answered Ellie’s call.
“You’re not going to believe this. My father had an affair. He had a mistress in New Jersey and they had a child. A girl. She’s thirteen. Gabrielle. Marilyn—that’s the mother—my father’s mistress—she died, and my father wanted me to—”
“Whoa! Back up! You’re babbling. Slow down and start over from ‘My father had an affair.’ ”
“He did. It started sixteen years ago. You realize that was even before my mother was sick, right? Bastard. I never thought he’d cheat on her. I thought he loved her and that they were happy together. I thought that—”
“Excuse me, but at the risk of sounding rude, that part isn’t relevant at the moment. Go back to the part about him having a child with this woman. How did you find out?”
“My dad’s attorney called Jesse Enright when he couldn’t get in touch with me. He’d sent me a letter—and my dad wrote to me as well—but I didn’t read any of the letters. I just felt so over that entire mess, I didn’t want to hear from my father or anyone else connected with all that. So I threw the envelopes away, thinking they were just some blah-blah-I’m-so-sorry stuff.”
“Jesse is your lawyer there, right? Engaged to the cupcake queen?”
“Right. Anyway, Max—my dad’s personal lawyer, not to be confused with his criminal lawyer—called Jesse because the girl—Gabrielle—had been staying with his family since the funeral and they wanted her out.”
Ellie related her conversation with Jesse.
“Wow. That’s gotta hurt.” Carly said when Ellie finished filling her in on the details. “So what happens now?”
“Now I wait for her to show up here this afternoon. Car, tell me the truth. Am I nuts? What if we hate each other? What if she hates me? What if she’s obnoxious and takes drugs and—”
“Stop it. Stop it now. You’re giving me a headache,” Carly protested. “Look, you’ve made the decision to give her a chance; now do it.”
Ellie paused. “You’re right. I need to be rational.”
“Just take a deep breath and don’t imagine the situation will be worse than it will be. She could be a perfectly nice kid.” Carly paused. “Or she could be demon spawn. Either way, you won’t know until she gets there.”
Ellie heard the car doors slam and looked out the window to see Jesse and a slim girl almost as tall as she standing behind it, the hatch open. Jesse placed several items in the girl’s arms before sliding a suitcase onto the ground.
“Which is now. I’ll call you back.…” Ellie disconnected the call and put the phone in her pocket.
“Here we go, Dune,” Ellie said to the dog, who was standing on her hind legs to look, too. “Wish all of us luck.…”
Ellie opened the front door and went outside, meeting the girl halfway up the drive.
“Gabrielle, I’m—”
“I know who you are. You’re Ellis.” The girl studied Ellie with sea-green eyes through round wire-framed glasses. She had dark brown hair—ironically, the same color that Ellie’d dyed hers—that came to her shoulders and she wore a College of New Jersey sweatshirt and jeans. “I’ve seen your pictures. Where should I go with this stuff?”
Ellie took one of the two boxes from Gabrielle’s hands and said, “This way.”
“You have a dog.” Gabrielle stopped on the walkway to stare down at Dune. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Her name is Dune.” Ellie was on the porch and was pushing the door open with her foot.
“What kind of dog is she?”
“Not sure. Some terrier mix, I think. She’s a rescue dog.”
“So you’ve done this before.” Her eyes huge behind her glasses, Gabrielle looked up at Ellie from the bottom of the steps. “The rescue thing. Good to know you’ve had experience with the homeless.”
She came up the stairs and walked into the foyer, past Ellie, whose mouth was hanging slightly open. Jesse followed with the suitcase, and whispered to Ellie on his way into the house, “I see you’ve met Gabrielle.”
“Sullen? Antisocial?” Ellie raised an eyebrow.
“Not that I could tell.”
“Maybe she didn’t like the Foresters.”
“Smart girl.” Jesse put the suitcase down.
“This is a really old house, isn’t it?” Gabrielle stood in the middle of the living room floor, taking it all in. “Our house was new. Everything was new. This place looks a little shabby.”
“I’ve only been here for a month,” Ellie told her. “I’m working on it.”
Gabrielle nodded and looked toward the stairwell. “Do I have a room?”
“You do. Third door on the right.”
“Great. Thanks.” The girl picked up the box and trotted up the steps, Dune racing her to the top, where Gabrielle paused and looked down at Jesse. “Do you think you could bring that up for me, please, Mr. Enright? It’s a little heavy and I’m just a kid.…”
An amused look on his face, Jesse carried the suitcase upstairs muttering “Yeah. Thirteen going on forty-five.”
Ellie sighed and followed him with the box in her arms.
“It’s nice that the room looks out at the woods.” Gabrielle had put the box she’d carried onto the bed and was looking out the back window. “And over there I can see the water. Is that the Chesapeake Bay? Mr. Forester said St. Dennis was on the Chesapeake Bay.”
“That’s the Bay, all right.” Jesse set the suitcase next to the box on the bedspread. “I’ll get the rest of your stuff.”
After Jesse left the room and his footsteps pounded on the stairs, Gabrielle turned to Ellie. “I know you didn’t want me to come here. It’s okay. I’ll try not to be any trouble.”
“Gabrielle … do you like Gabrielle or maybe Gabi?” Ellie asked.
Gabrielle shrugged. “Whichever you like.”
“No, it’s whatever you like.”
Again, a shrug. Not sullen, Ellie realized. Resigned.
“I prefer Ellie to Ellis.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle said. “It must feel weird to find out you have a sister you never knew about. I’m sorry.”
“No reason for you to apologize,” Ellie told her. “It isn’t your fault. And it has to be equally hard for you.”
“No, I knew about you. I know all about you. I looked at your pictures online all the time.” She looked up at Ellie with eyes as light as Ellie’s own. “You were the one he owned up to.”
“Lucky me.” Ellie grimaced, and regretted the words the second they were out of her mouth. Too late to take them back.
“Were you?” Gabrielle sat on the edge of the mattress and asked somewhat wistfully, “Was he a good father to you? It looked like he was, in all the pictures online.�
�
“He was a great father,” Ellie answered honestly. “Until he wasn’t. I don’t know why he did the things he did, but they were pretty terrible.”
“I read about that, too. My mom said people get addicted to all kinds of things, and that he just got addicted to making money instead of drugs.”
“That’s about as good an explanation as any that I’ve heard.” It was an apt comparison. Her father had exhibited all the signs of addiction, had she been paying attention. “How ’bout you? What kind of a father was he for you?”
“Okay until I was about eight or nine, then he sort of lost interest,” she said matter-of-factly. “I guess I was cuter when I was little, or maybe he and my mom got along better then. And he was never, like, ‘Oh, you’re Daddy’s little girl’ or anything like that. He always supported us, though. He wanted me to go to private school but my mom didn’t want me to go away. He was going to pay for that because he said education was important.”
“But no warm fuzzies?”
“Not so much.” Gabrielle tried to force an I-don’t-really-care attitude that didn’t match the look in her eyes. “But it’s okay. My expectations weren’t all that high.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie heard herself say.
“It’s okay. I had a really good mom.” Ellie expected Gabrielle to burst into tears, but instead, she held her chin up and met Ellie’s gaze with an acceptance that Ellie would not have expected.
“Are you hungry?” Ellie asked when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“A little. I didn’t get lunch.”
“I don’t know what you like to eat.”
“I like pretty much everything. My mom wasn’t a real good cook,” Gabrielle said.
“I don’t know that I’m much better, but I’ll see what I have that we can whip together.” Ellie leaned against the doorjamb. “You know, you can choose another room, if you like. Why not look into all of them while I make us a something to eat?”
“Okay, thanks.”
The Chesapeake Diaries Series 7-Book Bundle: Coming HOme, Home Again, Almost Home, Hometown Girl, Home for the Summer, The Long Way Home, At the River's Edge Page 175