Finding Happily-Ever-After

by Marie Ferrarella

  It was a ruse, Jewel thought, suppressing her annoyance. Her mother was deliberately arranging it so that she and Culhane wound up alone in her car. Her mother didn’t need directions, she had a natural, uncanny sense of direction. In addition to which, she also had a GPS mounted on her dashboard that provided alternate routes in case of any traffic snarls or whimsical acts of God and/or nature.

  But Jewel knew that she couldn’t very well come out and say that. Especially after her mother had successfully convinced Joel to switch vehicles.

  It’s a car, Mom, not a deserted island. Being alone with the man for ten minutes isn’t going to make him want to live happily ever after with me. Or me with him. Especially since there is no such thing.

  But she wouldn’t mind sleeping with the man, she realized as she stole a glance at the broad shoulders and chiseled, square chin. After she located his brother-in-law and closed the case, she silently emphasized.

  Squaring her own shoulders, Jewel led the way to her car.

  She marched like a soldier, Chris noted, aware of the cadence of her footsteps. He caught himself wondering about her, some of his curiosity, he silently admitted, raised because of the appearance of the other women.

  His had been a family in turmoil, more dedicated to shouting at one another and slamming doors to show their displeasure. His parents, he knew, were good people. They just weren’t good parents. He supposed he should count himself lucky that he’d turned out the way he had. But why him and not Rita?

  Why couldn’t he have helped Rita?

  At the very least, he should have stopped her from marrying Ray, a move that was, in his eyes, the beginning of the end for her.

  Buckling up, Chris glanced at the private investigator he was counting on to help him reclaim his orderly life. He waited until she’d pulled out of the parking space and was weaving her way onto the main road before he said anything. “He wasn’t there.”

  Jewel didn’t have to ask. She knew Culhane was referring to his ex-brother-in-law. “Not that I could see, no.”

  Impatience foiled his ability to stifle a sigh. “Now what?”

  Jewel was watching her mother, who was up ahead. After all these years, the woman still drove with a lead foot. You’d think that she would have learned to slow down a bit, be more careful. People complained about older drivers behaving as if they had molasses in their veins. Her mother drove as if she were in training for the Indy 500.

  “Now I’ll see if I can find out anything from his former employer at that garage you mentioned, the one where your sister first met her ex. Who knows? Maybe the guy stayed in touch with Ray, or gave him a referral when he went looking for another job.”

  “Another job?” His tone told her he thought that was reaching.

  “Man’s gotta eat and pay his bills.”

  Ray had probably found another woman to take advantage of. That was what he was good at. Survival—and falling through the cracks. “And if that doesn’t pan out?”

  “There are other ways to go,” she assured him, deliberately keeping her words vague.

  She half expected him to ask her to elaborate. When he didn’t, she took a split second to glance in his direction. He was clearly preoccupied. It didn’t take much to guess at what was on his mind. She’d seen him watching Joel at the service and the cemetery. The boy’s behavior mystified him.

  She could see it in their brief interaction at the cemetery. “Don’t worry about it.”

  It took a second for her words to penetrate. When they did, he had no idea what she was referring to. “What?”

  “I said don’t worry about it,” Jewel repeated. “Everyone deals with grief in his own way.” She took a guess. “Maybe it’s still not real to Joel. Maybe he still believes his mother will walk through the door.” She shrugged. “Or maybe he thinks that it’s not manly to cry.” She glanced at him again just before she made a right turn. “You didn’t cry,” she reminded him quietly.

  She noticed that Culhane squared his shoulders. Was he being defensive, or had she struck a raw nerve? “I don’t believe in displaying emotions in public.”

  Although part of her wanted to explore that a bit further, Jewel let it drop. “Maybe Joel feels the same way.”

  “He’s five,” Chris pointed out, emphasizing his age.

  That had nothing to do with it. “And he’s looking to the only male role model he has.”

  “Me?” Chris asked incredulously. They’d only been together for four days. People didn’t form attachments in four days.

  But, obviously, his private investigator saw it differently. “You,” Jewel confirmed.

  Chris snorted. “You’re wrong. The last time I saw Joel, he was two years old. How can I be his role model? He has no memory of me.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I can remember something that my mother tells me happened when I was only eighteen months old.”

  Now she was just making things up. If this was the way her mind worked, maybe he’d been a little too hasty in hiring her. “That’s not possible.”

  “The brain is a very strange organ,” Jewel informed him. She pressed down on the accelerator. Her mother was pulling farther and farther away. “Everything that’s ever happened to us, every song we’ve heard, everything we’ve ever seen, is imprinted there somewhere.” She shouldn’t have to be telling him this. “You’re a scientist, you should know that.”

  “Not exactly my field of expertise,” he countered. Chris took a breath, reconsidering her argument. It seemed almost impossible. “So you think he’s trying to imitate me?”

  “He’s trying to be a man, and you’re the closest role model he has. You heard him—he has no friends. Consequently, there are no fathers in his life, no one to take cues from.” She smiled, turning down another block. “Until you came along.”

  “Four days ago,” he emphasized again.

  “The length of time doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “You saw him. You’re here now and he absorbs things like a sponge.”

  “So you’re telling me that if I cry, then Joel will cry?”

  His was the voice of disbelief, she thought. You could lead a horse to water, but getting him to drink was a completely different matter. “Maybe.”

  “Well, I’m not crying,” he told her firmly. He couldn’t. If he let his guard down for one second, if he started to remember…

  There was nothing to be gained from that, he silently insisted.

  “No one’s telling you to.”

  The hell she wasn’t, he thought. “Rita knew what she was doing. Knew that she was throwing her life away. Turning her back on her education, on everything our parents wanted for her—” That was probably part of the reason she’d turned her back on it, he thought.

  The mention of the senior pair brought up more questions in Jewel’s mind. “Where are your parents?”

  “They’re dead,” he said matter-of-factly. “My father was literally hit by a Mack truck and I think my mother just died of a broken heart six months later. She felt as if she had nothing to live for. They argued a lot, but they loved each other.”

  That didn’t make any sense to her. Her mother had been distressed when her father had died, but she never lost her focus as a mother.

  “But Rita was still alive,” Jewel argued.

  He lifted a shoulder in a vague half shrug. “In a manner of speaking. I wasn’t the only one Rita cut ties with. She didn’t like to have to sit through lectures.”

  Who did? Jewel thought. “I’m sorry.”

  The last thing he wanted was pity. “There’s no reason for you to be sorry,” he told her.

  She looked at him for a long moment. They’d arrived at his late sister’s house and she still had to park, but this took precedence over that. “If you think that,” she told him, “then I’m even sorrier.”

  Chapter Five

  The moment Maizie, Theresa and Cecilia walked into the house that had known very little laughter and joy in the past several years, the three
women did what had come naturally to them all their lives: they took control.

  As Jewel stood back and watched, these powerhouses in three-inch heels took charge not just of the space, but of the boy and his uncle, as well.

  Resistance is futile, she thought with barely hidden amusement. She wondered if either, especially Culhane, knew that they never stood a ghost of a chance. Deceptively petite and innocent looks to the contrary, the ladies were formidable forces to be reckoned with. She knew that firsthand.

  While Theresa served the food she’d prepared for the occasion, Jewel saw her mother moving about, straightening whatever had somehow gotten out of place since the last time she had been here. That left Maizie to entertain Joel, something she did with aplomb. The fact that Nikki’s mother had been a grandmother-in-training from the moment her daughter had graduated from medical school certainly didn’t hurt.

  That left Jewel with Culhane.

  Just the way she knew her mother and the two women her mother had shared her innermost secrets with since the third grade wanted it.

  Too bad this isn’t going to go anywhere, ladies, she thought. The man was charmingly unaware of his seductive sensuality, which was an excellent—not to mention rare—quality, but she got the impression that he wasn’t in the market for a relationship, and God knew that she wasn’t. A memorable night of torrid sex, sure, but a lasting relationship? That was like pursuing a unicorn. It was a mythical thing that didn’t exist except in fairy tales and dreams.

  “This really isn’t necessary,” Chris was protesting again as Theresa handed him a plate of food she’d just put together.

  Behind the women were an array of casserole dishes and warming trays filled to capacity, which might easily have fed a small village if the occasion arose. Theresa had never believed that the words food and moderation belonged in the same sentence. Or the same room.

  “Don’t protest,” Jewel advised, accepting her own plate from Kate’s mother. “It won’t do you any good and besides, it keeps them busy and off the streets.”

  She glanced about the room, now so neat it almost hurt. Maizie was cheering Joel on as he played his video game—Jewel had insisted that he keep hers so that he could practice. And because she had run out of things to tidy, her mother was now rinsing off the serving spoons despite the fact that they all knew they were going to be used again almost immediately.

  “Somewhere,” Jewel commented with a shake of her head, “Donna Reed is looking down and smiling.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed as Cecilia focused in on her. “There’s nothing wrong with dusting off old-fashioned skills, Jewel. Sometimes a person just needs a break from the fast-paced modern world.” Cecilia turned toward Chris for backup. The narrowed eyes were gone, replaced with a wide, warm smile. “Don’t you agree, Chris?”

  Engrossed in the process of having a piece of prime rib melt away on his tongue, Chris was momentarily distracted. When he saw Cecilia looking at him, he realized that she’d asked him a question and he had missed it completely. “Excuse me?”

  Jewel came to his rescue. He might be a learned college professor, but he wasn’t a match for a card-carrying member of the triumvirate.

  “Mom, he’s just taken a bite of Theresa’s prime rib. The man’ll agree to anything,” Jewel pointed out. She grinned at Chris, waving him on. “Never mind, just eat. My mother was just advancing one of her favorite theories.”

  Over in the corner, their eyes on the small screen in the boy’s hands, both Maizie and Joel suddenly cheered. Joel had defeated the alien force and made the world safe for humanity once again.

  Maizie was the louder of the two.

  “This is a very sharp young man,” Maizie announced, congratulating Chris. She looked at her companion. “What grade did you say you were in? Because I think you’ll be ready for high school the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’m not in a grade,” Joel told her simply.

  “You’re not?” Maizie asked incredulously. She looked at him, confused. “How’s that possible?”

  “Because I’m not in school,” Joel answered. There was a touch of self-consciousness to his reply, as if he now realized that this wasn’t right.

  There was a skeptical expression on Maizie’s face when she looked over toward Jewel and the boy’s uncle. “He’s not in school?”

  “No,” Jewel answered before Chris could. She didn’t want the man being badgered, and whether they knew it or not, the triumvirate had a tendency to badger. “But that’s being handled.”

  Maizie looked relieved. “You’ve enrolled him?” she asked Chris.

  “Not yet,” he admitted.

  “Has he had his—inoculations?” Maizie changed terms at the last moment. Because her daughter was a pediatrician, Maizie was more up than most on certain requirements that school-aged children had to meet before they were even allowed to register.

  But Joel was not content to let the world roll right over him. He had questions. Especially when things pertained to him. “What’s in-noc-ulations?” he wanted to know.

  Jewel sensed that sugarcoating it would only earn his distrust once he found out what the word meant. So she gave him the truth.

  “Shots,” she told him despite her mother waving her hand behind the boy’s back to make her stop. “You go to the doctor and he or she gives them to you to keep you healthy.”

  Instead of displaying fear, the way Maizie and the other women clearly anticipated, the boy merely shook his head. “Not me.”

  She made a guess as to his meaning. “You’ve never had a shot?”

  Joel shook his head again, his bangs sweeping back and forth across his forehead from the force of his denial. “I never went to the doctor.”

  “You must have been one very healthy boy,” Cecilia commented in surprise.

  Joel shrugged, as if he really didn’t know if that was the case, one way or another. “Mama said I could get well by myself.”

  The three older women exchanged looks tinged with sadness that there were mothers out there who were only focused on themselves and consequently hardly paid the least attention when it came to their children’s welfare.

  However, it was Chris who voiced their collective concern out loud. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Your mom never took you to a doctor?”

  Joel looked as if he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He’d never known any other life but the one he’d led, causing him to believe that this was how things were done.

  “No.”

  Chris could feel his temper rising. Apparently, the loving, caring sister he’d known had died not the other day but a very long time ago.

  “Ever?” he pressed.

  “No.” Joel fidgeted, sensing his uncle’s barely contained displeasure. “Don’t get mad at her, Uncle Chris. I was okay,” he insisted.

  “He’s not mad, honey.” Standing up, Jewel crossed to the boy and put her arm around his shoulders. “He’s just concerned about you, that’s all.”

  “I can call Nikki,” Maizie volunteered. “I think she can find out if Joel’s ever received any of his required immunizations. There’s some database or something they can access for that,” she explained with a careless wave of her hand. “I’m sure she can see him tomorrow,” the woman added brightly.

  “Who’s Nikki?” Chris wanted to know.

  “Maizie’s daughter,” Theresa volunteered.

  “And an excellent pediatrician,” Maizie interjected with pride.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Jewel pointed out. They probably wouldn’t be able to get things moving until Monday.

  But Maizie was undaunted. “Doesn’t matter. Nikki’ll see him,” she promised with confidence. “She owes me. I gave her life. I’ll call her and let her know what’s up so she can get started,” Maizie said, taking out her cell phone.

  Because she sensed his bewilderment, Jewel looked over toward Chris. She was right. He was wearing a mystified expression. The threesome took a lot of ge
tting used to once they got going. They certainly could be overwhelming at times.

  Her eyes met his. “They all think like this,” she explained. “It comes naturally to them. They’re über-mothers to the nth degree.”

  He glanced in Joel’s direction. Now it was the woman who had brought all the food—Theresa he thought her name was—who was fussing over the boy. And the poor kid was lapping it up like some flower someone forgot to water for a very long time.

  Chris’s heart went out to the boy. “Über-mother,” he repeated almost to himself. “That’s not such a bad thing.”

  She could only laugh and shake her head. The man was a newbie. “You say that now. Try living with it for a while, then come back to me.”

  Belatedly, Jewel realized how the last part of her sentence sounded—as if it were an open invitation to Culhane, or at least an assumption that they were going to have an ongoing relationship rather than just a onetime client-investigator interaction. That was not what she was trying to convey.

  Because she didn’t know how to backtrack gracefully without being obvious or sticking her other foot in her mouth, Jewel took the only option that was left to her—she changed the subject.

  “Maizie’s daughter is a great pediatrician. If anyone can get Joel’s chart up-to-date, she can,” she promised Chris enthusiastically. “That way, there’ll be no problem getting him registered for school. You can have him in a kindergarten class in a week, if not less,” she concluded.

  Chris looked from Jewel to the triumvirate and then back again. “Which one?” he wanted to know. His world revolved around the university. He hadn’t a clue when it came to elementary schools in the area. “Which school do I take him to?”

  The question sounded deceptively simple. At first. “The one closest to the house,” Jewel told him. “Maizie is very good at knowing which neighborhood is in what school district.” The information she was giving him didn’t seem to enlighten Chris. The thoughtful frown remained and deepened just a little. “What’s wrong?”

  The woman was missing a very basic point, he thought. “If you don’t find Ray in the next few days, which address do we use for Joel?”