Family Matters (DiCarlo Brides book 4) (The DiCarlo Brides)

by Tullis, Heather

  He sat beside her. “How old is she?”

  “She’ll be ten in April.” Tears threatened, but Rosemary pushed them back. She couldn’t deal with them right now. “I don’t know what to do.” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe they’re gone.”

  His arm came around her, holding her close. “Hey, I know it’s rough. But you’ll be okay. You and Cleo. You’re one of the toughest people I know and you obviously love her.”

  “How can I raise my daughter?” Words started tumbling out of her mouth without thought. “I work insane hours and share a house and we live in the middle of nowhere. She’s used to the city and this, my irritating friend, is not the city, in case you’ve never noticed. I don’t know anything about being a parent and what if child protective services looks at me and says no way? What happens to her then?”

  He pulled her against his warm side, his voice was low and soothing. “Shh, one step at a time. When do you go to DC?”

  “In the wee hours of the morning. The funeral’s the following day, just got word about it.” Her voice caught on a sob. “So fast. It’s all happening so fast. How do I... What am I doing? That girl deserves better than me. Cecelia was like the perfect mother, and I’m… not. Why do you think I let the Markhams adopt her in the first place?”

  “Hey, a lot has happened for you in the past ten years. You’re going to be fine. You have a ton of family support here, and I bet Vince’s mom would love to add one more granddaughter to the mix—Hannah is about the same age, isn’t she—so you’ll have a grandma figure. And the rest of us will pull around you.” Hannah was Cami’s niece by marriage, and seriously adorable.

  “Do you just come and go here as you please?” she asked, feeling awkward about him seeing her fall apart, and just now realizing that he didn’t belong.

  “Delphi let me in. She directed me to the fridge, then told me you were down here if I wanted to harass you into something that resembled your own personality. She was worried.”

  “Sure she was.” Rosemary chuckled. “You can always count on Delphi to make sure the most irritating person is directed straight to my side.” She softened the words by leaning her head against his shoulder for a few seconds. It was odd talking to him like this. Comforting, and taking comfort from guys hadn’t been on her to-do list since Cleo’s birth dad split. “Thank you for listening. I guess I better break it to the others that they’re getting a new roommate, and I have no idea when I’ll be back. I’m going to wake up from nightmares that the restaurant kitchen is going to fall apart without me.”

  He laughed. “You probably need to pack if you’re going to make it onto the plane on time. And take a shower first.” He wrinkled his nose.

  She balled up her fist and smacked him in the shoulder, though she didn’t put much effort behind it. “You’re such a jerk sometimes.” But she felt oddly better.

  “If you need some support in DC—”

  “Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” she cut him off. “Alex will help me through the paperwork and I need to put all of my focus on Cleo.” But she wanted someone to hold her hand. Someone besides Alex—who was in Chicago anyway, though he came to Juniper Ridge for visits at least once per month. The thought of facing her mother alone was enough to give her indigestion, but it was almost a guarantee considering she lived in the same neighborhood as the Markhams. Not that Rosemary would stop by when she was in DC, but she couldn’t completely ignore Wanda if she was in town for the better part of a week. Wanda wouldn’t allow that.

  Settling things for Cleo was bound to be a messy, lengthy process. What did she tell the girl, anyway?

  Harrison didn’t push, but he didn’t look very happy about her refusal, either.

  Harrison left the bright, warm DiCarlo home to return to his quiet, dark, chilly cottage. He flipped on several lights, knowing Sage would get after him for wasting electricity, and turned on the television for company. Most of the time his empty place didn’t bother him much. He worked long hours, liked his privacy, and headed over to see Sage when he got lonely. It was one of the reasons he’d taken this job—because he wanted to be close to his sister.

  He opened his fridge and pulled out bread, cold cuts and cheese. It had been a difficult day and he didn’t have the energy for cooking anything. He thought again of Rosemary coming out of Lana’s office earlier, of the warmth that radiated between them. He thought of Sage and Joel and how happy and content they seemed now. And then he looked at his empty house and felt alone.

  It wasn’t a new feeling, so he refused to dwell on it. He’d made choices. There had been a woman a few year earlier who wanted to marry him, make a family, and he’d broken things off with her. He hadn’t wanted to—he’d been very tempted to propose and make that perfect nuclear family—mom, dad, kids. But it hadn’t been right and he hadn’t been able to convince himself otherwise.

  Sometimes he thought he was still that sad little boy whose father ran off and who had watched his sister be loved and nurtured by two parents—even if George hadn’t been around much. He thought he’d gotten past it, but seeing Rosemary again, seeing her with her sisters and they way Lana and Blake were anticipating their baby’s birth seemed to increase his urge for family, to be connected and part of something more.

  Tonight, when Rosemary talked about her daughter and becoming a parent, he’d felt that tug stronger than ever. Felt it for her.

  Had he been crazy to offer her his support? He layered on the smoked ham and pushed it from his mind. That way lay madness—as he’d already found since his arrival in Juniper Ridge.

  “Okay, what’s with the emergency meeting?” Jonquil asked as she set popcorn and chips on the coffee table in their sunken great room and hour later. The last of the sisters arrived only moments before and Rosemary refused to speak without them present, even if three no longer lived in the house. She didn’t want to have to go over any of this again, so handling all of their questions now was a must.

  She was anxious about how everyone would take her news—especially Jonquil and Delphi. Harrison was the first person she’d told about Cleome in years—and she never would have mentioned her to any of them if it weren’t for her chance to regain custody now. Some things were best kept to oneself.

  “Are you going to tell us why we’re here?” Delphi asked as she pulled out her earrings. “Not that losing your friends isn’t a big deal, but you didn’t call us all here to bare you soul.”

  Rosemary had been lifting a glass of water to her mouth and was glad she hadn’t been drinking when she heard that—she might have inhaled a mouthful. As it was, it took a moment to answer. “You’re not as far off as you think.”

  Sage patted Rosemary’s knee. “It’s okay, no one will give you trouble about what you’re going to say.”

  “You sure about that?” Delphi asked, but the words were mild, more a tease than a real challenge. Sometimes it was hard to tell with her, though.

  “Pretty sure.” Sage smiled, her dark gypsy features calm and supportive.

  Rosemary nodded and plunged ahead. “I got pregnant when I was nineteen.”

  Eyes bugged, breaths of surprise were drawn in and the room became quiet enough to hear Delphi’s earring hit the carpet. She scrambled to pull the pearl stud out of the deep pile and Rosemary couldn’t help but feel a little satisfaction that her announcement had thrown her cool-headed sister off-balance.

  She continued. “There was this couple in my neighborhood—really sweet, friendly, let me come over all of the time. Cecelia taught me to cook. They couldn’t have kids of their own, so I offered to let them adopt my little girl. They were thrilled. Now they’re,” she had been planning to say dead in that matter-of-fact voice she had been using for the whole story, but couldn’t get it to come out of her throat. She changed her word choice and still had a waver in her voice when she spoke, “gone. It leaves my daughter, who is nine now, an orphan. This morning when the lawyer came to tell about them, he said the Markhams wanted m
e to become her guardian if something happened to them.”

  More gasps, but Sage was right—no one gave her a hard time. Not yet, anyway.

  “So you have to bring her back here, to live in our house.” Delphi’s face was blank, not giving away any hint of how she felt about it.

  “I’d get a place of my own if it were an option, but thanks to Dad’s will, it’s not, so yeah, I’m going to have to bring her back here. I know that means you and Jonquil are going to be inconvenienced with the noise and mess, and giggling voices, but until September—”

  “Right,” Jonquil said with a firm nod. “There are three empty bedrooms now. They all have private bathrooms and desks in them, so it’s not like she’s going to be taking over our private spaces. If we can deal with Lana the hot-water hog here for the first part of the year,” she paused to grin when Lana protested, “we can manage a nine-year-old.”

  Rosemary nodded, feeling relief, even though she expected nothing less from Jonquil. She turned toward Delphi—the one who was more likely to object.

  “I don’t see that there’s much choice.” The words were a little harsh, but the tone wasn’t. She spoke low and looked more sad than mad. “It’s not like you can turn down your kid. If you wanted to do that, you already would have and we wouldn’t have heard a word about it.”

  “You don’t want Cleo here?” Rosemary asked, her heart clenching at the thought that Delphi might make it hard for Cleo.

  “I don’t have a problem with it. And I’ll try not to be too big of a pain about it.” When Rosemary’s brows lifted high enough they must have been encroaching on her hairline, Delphi scowled. “She’s your little girl, which makes her every bit as much a part of this mess as the rest of us. You think I’m some monster that I can’t see she needs someone who cares about her? You do, right? Want her to move here? You never said it, but I’ve learned to read you a little.”

  “Of course I want her! You think I would have given her up at all if I’d felt like I had another reasonable option—or if the Markhams hadn’t been there, waiting with open arms to treat my baby the way every kid deserves?” Anger blasted through her at the insinuation that she might not be thrilled at this second chance.

  “What about the father?” Cami asked. “Where was he through all of this?”

  “He took off the minute he found out I was pregnant,” Rosemary said, crossing her arms over her chest in a defiant gesture. There was only a twinge of regret now, after so many years, though it had been painful at the time. “I couldn’t even find him to have him sign the papers. Never heard a word from him again.”

  “Lovely taste in men, you have,” Delphi said.

  “Yeah. Tell me about it. Me and men are such a bad mix. It’s too bad they have to be so appealing.” Rosemary sighed heavily, thinking of Harrison and the way he came to talk to her earlier. He was so confusing.

  “So what do you want us to tell everyone?” Cami asked.

  Rosemary considered, still not clear on how she felt about everything. “Nothing for now. I’ll talk with the attorneys and Cleo, see what’s going on, and we’ll figure it out when I get back.” The next words were hard to speak, but despite their differences and their petty squabbles, they’d all managed to pull together when needed for the public eye. “I’ve never told anyone about this, not any of the guys I’ve dated or any new friends. I just don’t talk about it, so I’d prefer it if we keep things quiet for now. If the media catches wind of it, just say... I don’t know. Just say that I’ve gone to a funeral and we have no comment at this time. I guess.”

  “We can do that. We’re excellent at the ‘no comment’ line,” Lana said. “And getting more expert with every passing day.”

  “That’s just sad,” Rosemary said, but she felt better now she’d gotten it all out.

  Harrison couldn’t get Rosemary’s worried face out of his mind. She was in DC now, dealing with everything on her own. She was grieving and worried—he’d noticed how rarely she showed what she really felt so it had to be bad. Usually she just put on a touchy exterior, said something outrageous and let everyone else blow up around her. But she didn’t do that this time. No, this time she’d crumbled.

  He rubbed his eyes when he had trouble focusing on the insurance paperwork sitting in front of him.

  “You okay? You look tired.” Sage entered the room carrying two hot-drink cups—the reusable kind, of course. “I had a feeling you could use this.”

  She set a cup in front of him, and from the scent of it, she’d made her favorite wake-up tea blend.

  “Thank you. You always know.” He took a sip and noticed it was the perfect temperature.

  “You’re worried about Rosemary.” She took a sip of her own drink. “I’m worried too. Something, I don’t know. Something’s bothering me.” She twisted her necklace, making the green and blue polished rocks shimmer in the florescent lights.

  He felt a tight ball form in his stomach. “You mean a feeling feeling, or just a general feeling?” Sage had always had precognition. She claimed she could never use it for herself, but randomly she would make very specific predictions that always came true. The general feeling thing was less reliable, but he was more likely to heed her warnings anyway.

  “I’m not sure. I tried focusing on her during my meditation this morning, but I couldn’t get anything clear. It wasn’t specific like sometimes, just this feeling that she shouldn’t be out there alone.” She took a sip of her tea. “You leave for DC tomorrow. You should stop in to see her, just to check on her. For me.” She looked at him over the rim of her cup, a glint of mischief in her eyes.

  The temptation to go with his sister’s suggestion was strong. He wanted to be there for Rosemary, wanted to check on her, but would she even let him in the door? “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  She watched him over the top of her cup as she took a long swallow. “Hmmm. I think it’s a very good idea. You need to start making amends with her if you’re going to get her to see you differently, you know.”

  Harrison didn’t respond to that. There was no point arguing with her about his feelings. She’d always been able to read him. “I don’t know if that’s possible. Things started out bad a decade ago, and they haven’t gotten much better, even after months of working together.” He considered their chat at her house the previous night to be a fluke even though it was definitely an improvement over their usual arguments. He could see what she really was, under all of the veneer, but unless he could get her to look at him as something more than the pain in her rear, it would make no difference.

  She smiled. “The whole ordeal on the ship would almost have been funny now if she didn’t hold a grudge for so long.”

  “Yeah. Who knew?” He tried to smile back, but he’d never regretted anything he’d done more than he regretted the words he’d said that day. “You better get back to work.”

  “Right. You, too.” Unoffended, she stood, but came around his desk and squeezed his shoulder. “See her while you’re in DC, Harrison. She needs you there.”

  He watched her go and considered her suggestion, wondering if he was crazy for even thinking about it.

  The funeral was the pits. Rosemary had known it would be, but she didn’t expect it to be quite so difficult. She gave Cleo a hug at the viewing, the blond girl’s face was wan, scared and sad. Rosemary thought she must be dying a little inside, trying to figure out what came next and how to go on without the people who had been everything to her. Rosemary had felt much the same way when her dad died, and she’d been an adult, grown and on her own.

  Don’s brother, Mike, gave the eulogy, and Cecilia’s cousin sang. The double caskets brought the whole thing home for Rosemary. There was no viewing, thanks to the bomb blast. Rosemary was just as glad. She’d rather remember them as they had been a few weeks ago when she’d visited.

  After the interment, Rosemary went back to Cecelia’s brother’s house for refreshments and talk. Cleo rode there with the neighbors sh
e’d been staying with, but found her when she had been there less than two minutes. She latched onto Rosemary’s hand. “I don’t know many of these people,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. I don’t recognize very many of them, either. Maybe we should get something to eat and sit in the corner there.” She wasn’t hungry, but hadn’t eaten anything since the airline food the previous day—her appetite was non-existent. She knew she needed to eat something, even if it was just a little bit. And Cleo would need to eat. She was too thin already.

  “I’m not hungry,” Cleo said.

  Like mother, like daughter. And that was a strange thought. “Just a little bit. I bet you’re hungrier than you think.”

  Cleo shrugged and went along with Rosemary to fill up their plates from the fruit and veggie trays, cold cuts and cheese, bread and rolls in several varieties, and Cleo grabbed a slice of cake. They got glasses of water and found spots away from the main traffic.

  “How are you doing?” Rosemary asked when they were seated.

  “I miss you.” Cleo leaned slightly against Rosemary. “You used to come over all the time.”

  It had been one of the reasons she hadn’t wanted to take the job in Colorado. Though ‘all the time’ was a bit of an exaggeration. A couple of times a month was more accurate. Though Cecilia and Don had both kept Rosemary’s connection to the girl a secret, they had encouraged the two of them to spend time together. Rosemary had been grateful, as giving up Cleo had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Going to Europe for two years to study with master chefs had been agonizing—she’d only made three visits home the whole time. Thank goodness for email.

  “My Uncle Mike doesn’t really want me. But he thinks I should live with him anyway. My other uncle says it’s because he wants my parents’ money.” She looked at Rosemary quizzically. “We weren’t rich.”