by Amanda Wen
Kimberly.
“Are you sure?” he said aloud. An older couple walking a golden retriever glanced his way, and he offered what he hoped was a reassuring, I’m-not-really-talking-to-myself smile.
Then his phone buzzed in his hand. He glanced down.
Kimberly.
Well played. He lifted the phone to his ear.
“Garrett. Hi. Kimberly Walsh. Listen, I’m sorry to call so early, but I’m booked solid today, and if I didn’t call now, I probably wouldn’t.”
“No worries. I was about to call you anyway. How can I help?”
“I heard through the grapevine that you and Warren Williams reached a deal on your grandparents’ land. Is that true?”
He pulled his right foot up for a quad stretch. “We did have a deal. A verbal one anyway. But I chose not to proceed.”
“Really?” Kimberly seemed to be weighing her words carefully. “So Warren Williams won’t be buying the property?”
“Nope.” Garrett shook out his right leg, then reached for his left.
“Well, I can’t say I’m entirely unbiased,” Kimberly replied. “But in my humble—and biased—opinion, I’m glad.”
“Thank you.” He spoke both to Kimberly and to God, and his loosened, limbered muscles echoed the release in his heart. Not a day would pass when he wouldn’t be glad God had yanked him off the disastrous path of his own planning.
“So have you made any other plans regarding the property?”
A robin hopped along the asphalt and stopped in front of him. It cocked its head and peered at Garrett, as though it too were interested in his answer.
“Nothing definite, although I’m leaning toward an auction. I had one set up with McCue’s that I canceled when I made the deal with Williams. I’m not sure when their next available date is.” He propped his right foot on the bumper of the Camry and bent forward to stretch his calf. “Mostly I’m just praying for direction.”
“I see.” Another thoughtful pause. “Maybe I can help with that. Because I’d like to throw my hat into the ring.”
He straightened and switched legs. “I appreciate that, but we had to move my grandmother to a care facility sooner than we thought. Time is of the essence now, and we can’t afford to have the place sit on the market for months—”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m not interested in listing the house. I want to buy it.”
Garrett froze. “Like, for a flip?” If she wanted to flip it, they could sell it as is. The sale price would be lower, of course, but they wouldn’t have to wait.
“No, not a flip.”
“Wait, you’re the hipster homesteader with the chickens?”
Kimberly’s laughter bubbled through the phone. “Nope. No chickens. My husband’s allergic to feathers. I’ve just … come to appreciate the home’s legacy. Something that’s been there that long, that means so much to so many, deserves to stay standing. I’m all for development, obviously—wouldn’t have much work if I wasn’t—but this place is special. I want to make sure it’s preserved.”
Garrett leaned for a torso stretch. “Sounds like you’ve been talking to Sloane.”
The pause on the other end stretched far longer than his offhand comment warranted.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded odd. “I have been talking to Sloane.”
Birds trilled in the trees over Sloane’s head, their melodies floating on the warm, summery breeze buffeting Jamesville Park Cemetery. A curious cottontail paused beneath a shrub to chew a blade of grass, studying Sloane through round, wary eyes. Gossamer tufts of white fluff drifted like fat snowflakes from a stately cottonwood, illuminated by golden sunshine.
It was so peaceful. So serene.
Totally at odds with the chaos churning inside.
Sloane’s footsteps punctuated the birdsong, the crinkle of the plastic around the flowers she’d brought the only other sound. Perhaps it was weird, meeting the woman who gave her birth at a place for burying the dead. But this little country cemetery, nestled among the wheat fields just outside town, was where Jack and Annabelle were laid to rest. Where, according to her research, several other relatives were buried as well.
The Brennan family. Her family. Her origins.
So what better place to meet her connection to those origins? If her mother thought the location strange, she hadn’t said a word. She’d simply agreed on the time and place.
Score a point for Marinera.
Sloane glanced at her watch, terror and exhilaration competing for supremacy. She’d purposely arrived early to see the Brennans’ graves. Marinera wasn’t due for another few minutes.
Though photos of the monuments were available online, viewing them digitally couldn’t hold a candle to being here. Walking where her ancestors had walked. Standing where her bereaved family once stood, comforting one another with fond memories and reassurances of a glorious eternity.
Paying her own respects to the foremother she knew only through faded ink on yellowed pages, yet to whom she was indelibly linked.
She had to be close to the Brennans’ stones, because here were the Maxwells, memorialized with a large white obelisk. With her finger she traced the engraved birth and death dates of Annabelle’s Uncle Stephen and Aunt Katherine. So much life encompassed by those years and the simple dashes between them. So much adventure. So much love. So many contributions to this county and its history.
A yellow butterfly flitted past Sloane, fluttered off to the left, and—there. There they were.
With a last reverent glance at the Maxwells’ monument, she hastily crossed to another granite obelisk, this one in reddish stone, the name Brennan etched prominently along the top.
The side facing her featured Jack’s information, and tears stung her eyes as she took it in. The dates of birth and death. The forty-six short years God had given him. Regimental information from his Civil War service, mentioned only briefly in Annabelle’s diaries. He never spoke much about that time in his life, she said.
Sloane traced the rough stone etching with a fingertip, then walked around to the next side. Sarah E., wife of J. F. Brennan, it read. Below it, J. H., son of J. F. and S. E. Brennan.
Sloane swallowed around a lump in her throat. Though only a fortunate few knew Sarah Brennan’s true burial site, it was comforting to know she’d been immortalized here. Especially given the likely fate of the original graves.
Anger welled, but Sloane ordered it into silence. This was a place of peace. Besides, what she was looking for was likely just around the corner of the stone …
There.
Annabelle M.
Wife of J. F. Brennan
b. Mar. 14, 1852
d. May 22, 1936
Aged 84 years
She hadn’t gone to California after all. Tears fell at the confirmation. And what a life. What a legacy. The girl who’d come to Kansas in a covered wagon in 1870 had lived to see automobiles. Radios. Airplanes.
Her heart overflowing with a thousand emotions, Sloane knelt in the cool grass before Annabelle’s grave and laid the cellophane-wrapped spring bouquet amid bright yellow dandelions and puffy purple-and-white clover. How long had it been since anyone laid flowers here? Far too long.
After a moment, she stood, kissed her fingertips, and pressed them to the stone’s cool, lichen-covered surface, then walked around to the fourth side. Etched there were Emmaline’s name and dates, along with those of Jack and Annabelle’s son Stephen, gone in 1905 at the tender age of twenty-two.
Sloane gazed at the dates, at the dash of another life cut short. What tragedy had befallen him? They’d yet to find any diaries from that era, so she could only guess. An illness perhaps? An accident? She made a mental note to check newspaper archives for more information.
Sloane laid a hand on the rough edge of the obelisk. Poor Annabelle. How had she coped with the loss of yet another child, another precious loved one?
But the question had a simple answer. Annabelle had doubtless coped the same
way she always did.
By running to the arms of her heavenly Father.
Footsteps crunched through the grass behind her, and Sloane’s breath caught.
Her mother was here.
This was it. The moment she’d waited three decades for.
She was so ready.
And so not ready.
Heart somersaulting into her throat, mouth cottony, she turned.
A familiar flash of red hair, brushed back with a pale hand. A wobbly smile as the woman walked toward her.
Sloane stared. “Kimberly? What are you … ?”
Kimberly slipped off her sunglasses to reveal eyes shining with unshed tears.
Brown eyes, flecked with gold.
Eyes that suddenly looked all too familiar.
The wobbly smile widened. “Hi, Sloane.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SLOANE’S MOUTH OPENED, but no words came out. Tingling heat flooded her body. Darkness danced at the edges of her vision. A bird chirped from what seemed like the end of a long tunnel. She wanted to run, but her feet had taken root right here next to the Brennan family plot. All she could do was stand and watch Kimberly—Marinera72, her mother—advance slowly toward her.
She stopped a few paces away, sunglasses in hand. “My word, you look so much like Nonna.”
Nonna. Domenica Brennan.
Sloane’s link to Annabelle.
Kimberly’s link to Annabelle.
Her birth mother was Kimberly.
Was this some bizarre cosmic prank? Was God laughing in her face right now? Or was it a dream? Was she about to wake up in a cold sweat, glance at her phone to find some ridiculous hour, and be relieved—or maybe disappointed—it wasn’t real?
A squirrel’s chatter pierced the stillness. A spring breeze kissed her face. Another tuft of cotton wafted past her.
She was wide awake.
But was Kimberly for real? How had she found out? When?
And why hadn’t she said anything?
Questions condensed into a single, monosyllabic squeak. “How … ?”
“That day Garrett had me come out and look at the house, remember? You were there. That’s why I was so confused, because there was just something so familiar about you. Your dark hair, your heart-shaped face, the way you carry yourself … it was so much like Nonna it gave me chills.” The wobbly smile returned. “I thought I was losing it.”
The faded scene replayed in her mind. Sloane had been so focused on Garrett, on the Carter and Macy Realty logo on Kimberly’s SUV, that she hadn’t taken a close look at Kimberly herself.
Her mother. Sharing space with her for the first time in thirty years.
“My mind’s always played tricks on me,” she said. “Lots of times I’d see someone about the right age and I’d wonder if she was my daughter. So I tried to convince myself it was all in my head. But then Garrett took me inside. I saw those family photos his sister had all over the table …”
The photos Sloane had come over to see just moments before. The whole reason she was at the house when Kimberly arrived.
“And one of them made me do a triple take. Because I’d grown up with a picture just like it on the living room wall.”
Words. Words. They buzzed around Sloane’s head like pesky flies. Bounced off the surface of her confusion.
Kimberly dug in an ivory Coach purse and withdrew her phone. With a manicured fingertip, she scrolled through some photos, then held the phone out. Sloane took it, and her fingers brushed Kimberly’s pale ones.
Her mother’s fingers.
Their first physical contact in thirty years.
Her heartbeat jackhammering, she cupped her right hand above the screen to better view the grainy black-and-white image.
It was one she vaguely recalled seeing on the table, though at the time it hadn’t registered since she’d focused on the photo of the woman she now knew was Annabelle. In this picture, two women in flapper-era dresses and headbands smiled at the camera. One of them, fair-skinned and blonde, resembled a young Rosie.
But the other one, with more olive-toned skin and darker hair … Sloane’s breath hung suspended between inhale and exhale. Because that woman had her nose. Her chin. Her cheekbones. The same dimple on the left side of her smile.
Goosebumps pricked her arms despite the day’s warmth.
“And here’s the one I grew up with.” Her voice tremulous, Kimberly pulled a faded black-and-white picture from her purse. “Meet my Nonna. Domenica Brennan.”
Sloane took the photo with a shaking hand. The same two women, a few years older, now joined by two men. The one beside Domenica stood with his hand on her waist, his dark hair slicked back. From the nose down, he resembled Jack, but his eyes looked just like Annabelle’s.
“John Patrick.” Sloane caressed the man’s face with her fingertip.
“I never met him.” Kimberly’s voice barely registered, so focused was Sloane on the photograph. “He was a few years older than Nonna. I think he died in the ’60s sometime. Nonna lived until 1978.”
Sloane’s gaze moved to the other couple in the photo. The Rosie look-alike had added glasses since the previous photo and held a chubby baby boy on one hip. “Who’s this?”
“That’s Grampy’s second cousin Pearl and her husband. I didn’t know her well, but she and Nonna were close. They became friends at a family wedding—that’s the story I heard anyway. They wrote letters back and forth and were practically inseparable whenever Grampy and Nonna visited Kansas.”
Kimberly kept talking, no doubt sharing valuable family information, but the words dulled. Because behind the couple stood shining white clapboards, fresh and clean. A porch Sloane knew well—a porch she’d always seen listing to the left—stood straight and tall.
“Do you know where this picture was taken?” she asked.
“At Rosie Spencer’s house.” Kimberly’s voice wavered. “I didn’t recognize it when I went out there because I’d never been, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the house in the photo. But Nonna always spoke fondly of coming to Kansas for Granny Annie’s eightieth birthday. Once you made the Brennan connection, I put two and two together.”
Sloane’s gaze fell on the name on the Brennan family obelisk. On the bouquet she’d laid there minutes before.
Granny Annie.
Annabelle.
Kimberly gave a soft chuckle. “There’s a family story that Nonna’s nickname in Grampy’s family was Betty Boop. Nonna experimented with a short haircut right after that cartoon came out. I guess one of the littler cousins started the nickname, and that’s what they all called her until the day she died.”
The truth slammed into Sloane’s midsection. Auntie Boop. No wonder Rosie had called her that from the beginning. She doubtless would have remembered Domenica. Would have seen the resemblance.
Sloane handed the phone back to Kimberly, wide-eyed.
It was all true.
Kimberly was her mother.
“I found another letter.” Kimberly tucked her phone into her purse and pulled out a plastic bag containing a worn, yellowed envelope. “It’s to Nonna from her mother-in-law. Since you’ve been reading those diaries, I thought you might like to have this.”
Hands trembling, Sloane took the envelope. It was covered with Annabelle’s handwriting. The same scrolls and loops. The same faded ink.
“I knew you’d been … looking for me.” Kimberly’s hesitant words yanked Sloane’s attention from the envelope. “And I thought I wasn’t ready to know you. To admit what I did.”
Sloane took a step back. “Wait. You knew I was looking? The whole time?”
“No, I only got on that website last fall. Thirty years after I found out I was pregnant.” Kimberly wrapped her arms around her midsection. “I knew you had to be out there somewhere, but once I set up the account, I only had the guts to look a couple of times. I … didn’t feel like I had the right to look. That you wouldn’t want anything to do with me, and I certainly didn
’t deserve to find you. And I thought I was fine with that.”
Last fall. Her mother had been on the site since last fall.
Kimberly’s gaze skimmed Sloane’s face, and her smile widened. “But then I saw you, and I figured out who you were, and you were looking for me, you wanted to know me, even after what I did … and it gave me the courage to try. To risk it. Because I wanted to know you.”
Her mother. Wanted to know her. After thirty years of silence, her mother wanted to know her.
“And I want you to know me.” Kimberly moved toward a bench beneath a big, shimmering cottonwood. She sat down and patted the surface next to her, her rings clinking against the concrete. “So … here I am. Any question you have, I’m ready to answer.”
Any question? The question that had been the drumbeat of Sloane’s entire existence? Surely Kimberly didn’t mean she could ask that. Not after a handful of emails and a few minutes of in-person contact.
She was bracing herself for it, though. Her guarded expression as Sloane drew closer suggested she expected the question. Dreaded it.
Sloane sat with a sigh and folded her hands in her lap. A whiff of Kimberly’s perfume cut through the fragrance of flowers and freshly mown grass.
“In all the time I looked for my mother, I never expected her to be … here. In Wichita.” She studied Kimberly’s face. “Especially when you led me to believe you live somewhere else.”
Kimberly’s gaze fell. “It was a little misleading, I’ll admit. Although technically not a lie. We live in Andover.”
A suburb in the next county. Semantics. Sloane wasn’t going to get distracted arguing finer points of the map. “So why do you live here?”
“My second husband got transferred. I wasn’t thrilled—I thought it’d be flat and boring with nothing to do. That’s what everyone said about it anyway. But I remembered all the things Nonna would say about beautiful sunsets and kindhearted, salt-of-the-earth people, and I decided to give it a chance. And Nonna was right. Wichita’s not flashy. It’s not the kind of place that shouts from the rooftops about all it has to offer. You have to look beneath the surface. And Greg hated it here. He never looked. But I did. And I loved it. So I stayed.”