by Gina Wilkins
“My inheritance, of course,” Lucas answered, his voice hard. “I’m here to claim my share of the McBride legacy.”
Since the McBride legacy had been one of scandal rather than fortune, Ernestine was left with very little to say in response.
Savannah quickly introduced Lucas to her twins, Miranda and Michael. Not knowing what to say to the wide-eyed adolescents, Lucas nodded and murmured something he hoped was sufficient.
Bobbie towed him then to another corner of the room where her sons, Trevor and Trent, waited. Trevor, married and the father of a small son, had a political appointment of some sort in Washington, D.C. Lucas thought his cousin looked very much the young politician with his GQ clothes and expensive haircut, but he seemed pleasant enough when he shook Lucas’s hand and introduced his pregnant, picture-perfect wife.
Trent, the youngest of the McBride cousins at twenty-two, was a senior at the Air Force academy, as was evident from his military haircut and board-straight posture.
“I remember you,” he said, shaking Lucas’s hand. “You taught me to ride my bike.”
“I did?” Lucas frowned. “Are you sure?”
Trent chuckled. “Yeah. Dad had about given up because I was so afraid of falling that I screamed every time he let go of the bike. You waited until he went inside, then you plopped me down on the seat, pointed me downhill and let go. I was too intimidated by you to argue and too afraid of falling to ignore the instructions you yelled after me. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill, I was balancing like a pro.”
Lucas sort of remembered now. It was just a bit hard to reconcile his memory of a tearful, towheaded little boy with this tall, self-assured young man.
Family. Funny how he was beginning to feel a part of this one again, after spending so many years on his own.
A small hand slipped suddenly into Lucas’s. He looked down to find Clay Davenport gazing up at him.
“I asked Santa for a new bike for Christmas,” the boy reminded him eagerly. “Will you help me ride it if I get one, Uncle Lucas?”
Rather touched by the boy’s gesture, Lucas nodded. “Sure, kid. But you have to promise to wear a helmet every time you ride.”
“Even on hot days?” Clay asked, wrinkling his nose.
“Every single time,” Lucas replied firmly. “Riding a bike without a helmet is totally uncool.”
Clay squared his shoulders, making an effort to look as “cool” as possible, for a snub-nosed eightyear-old. “I’ll wear a helmet all the time, Uncle Lucas. I promise.”
He nodded in satisfaction. “Good.”
“Once again,” Wade murmured, placing his hands on his son’s shoulders, “you’re being pretty confident that Santa’s going to bring you a bike.”
Clay smiled winningly. “I’ve been very good this year.”
Wade chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. “We’ll see if Santa agrees.”
“I imagine everyone’s getting hungry,” Bobbie announced, clapping her hands for attention. “Let’s get the food out so we can eat.”
Having now met and been greeted by everyone, Lucas found himself being treated with the same casual warmth as the others—almost as if it hadn’t been fifteen years since he’d last joined them for Christmas dinner. But even as he mingled with his family, he found himself thinking of Rachel, and wondering what it would be like if she were here with him at the McBride family gathering.
HER STRENGTH drained from the exertion of attending the church candlelight service, Rachel’s grandmother went to bed almost immediately after they returned home. Rachel found herself sitting alone in the quiet house with several hours of Christmas Eve still lying ahead of her.
She tried for a while to concentrate on the holiday movies playing on TV. They couldn’t hold her attention. Nor could the mystery novel she tried to read after turning the television off. She paced restlessly through the house, knowing it would be a waste of time to try to go to bed. She wasn’t even close to being sleepy.
You know where to find me. If you want to find me.
Lucas’s words echoed so clearly in her head that she could almost see him standing in front of her, saying them.
“No,” she said aloud. “Don’t do this, Rachel.”
She couldn’t help picturing him surrounded by his family this evening. How was he getting along with everyone? Was he mingling? Smiling? Laughing, maybe? Sharing family memories, swapping old stories?
It was hard to imagine Lucas in the middle of a crowd when she always thought of him as such a loner.
Had he thought of her tonight?
You know where to find me. If you want to find me.
She shook her head, as though she could physically dislodge the disturbing memory of his deep voice.
She couldn’t sit here like this, moping over Lucas the way she had as a love-struck teenager. She had to do something to distract herself. So she concentrated, instead, on the improbable tale he’d told her during lunch.
She could hardly believe her brother had concocted such a wild story. Rachel herself had tried during the years to come up with a plausible explanation for their father’s abandonment, but murder had never been one of the scenarios she’d imagined.
Poor Roger. He’d always been so angry. So sullen. So unreliable. Twenty-one at the time of his death, he’d dropped out of college, had been fired from two different jobs because he’d refused to follow directions, and had lived on a diet of beer and bitterness. And he’d had an almost pathological dislike for the McBrides, blaming them for almost every perceived injustice in his life.
Rachel had tried a time or two to make him see reason. She’d pointed out that Nadine had been a McBride only by marriage, and that none of the others had anything to do with Al’s betrayal. She’d reminded him that Emily, especially, had been as deeply hurt as Rachel and Roger had been, and deserved their sympathy, not their antagonism.
But Roger would never listen to Rachel. The only member of his family who’d had any influence over Roger had been their father’s brother, Sam. Sam had made a halfhearted effort to be a mentor to his fatherless nephew, but Sam had been almost as irrational as Roger where the McBrides were concerned.
Rachel had heard whispers that there’d been a history of some sort between Sam and Nadine, that Nadine had been involved with Sam before dumping him unceremoniously to marry the much older widower, Josiah McBride, Jr. After her marriage, Nadine had taken up with Sam’s older brother, Al Jennings, engaging in an illicit affair that had finally led to a clandestine elopement.
Rachel wondered if Sam had ever found out about Roger’s ridiculous theory that Josiah had murdered Nadine and Al.
She hadn’t talked to her uncle since that scene in the café Tuesday. He’d been unreasonably furious with Rachel for being polite to Lucas and Emily, and she’d been annoyed with him for embarrassing her so publicly. They’d parted very coolly in the parking lot outside the café, making no plans to meet again.
The Jennings family had truly fallen apart, Rachel couldn’t help thinking, while the McBride clan seemed to be thriving. Roger would have hated that. Sam probably did, too.
On an impulse, Rachel climbed the stairs to her grandmother’s attic. She had been trying to organize some of her grandmother’s belongings during the past few days, separating items to be sold from those to be placed in storage for now. She’d found several boxes of Roger’s possessions, though she hadn’t gone through them. Now she found herself wondering about that “proof” Roger had supposedly found to verify his wild tale of jealousy and murder.
Distraught by her son’s death, Jane Jennings had dumped all his belongings into large cardboard boxes without taking time to go through them. She’d sealed the cartons with heavy packing tape and hidden them in this attic, where they’d remained undisturbed for fifteen years. Rachel broke two nails trying to open the first box before finally going downstairs for a knife.
She rummaged through her brother’s things with a heavy heart, wishing the
y’d had a better relationship. Emily had been separated from her brother for a long time, and still looked at him now as though the sun rose and set in him. Rachel had never felt that way about Roger.
She dug through clothing, shoes, toiletries, accessories. Jane had packed everything—half-empty containers of toothpaste and deodorant a used, disposable razor, a can of athlete’s-foot spray. Rachel sighed, shook her head and closed the box, having found nothing out of the ordinary.
A second carton held books. Paperback murder mysteries, mostly, along with a few worn sciencefiction novels. Roger had been an avid reader; Rachel couldn’t help wondering if he’d begun to lose his ability to distinguish fact from fiction.
The third box Rachel opened held the contents of the desk that had been in Roger’s room. His wallet, personal papers, bankbooks, tax forms. A sealed manila envelope held his high-school diploma and a certificate declaring him an honor graduate. Roger had been intelligent enough; he’d just never lived up to his potential.
At the very bottom of the box was another sealed manila envelope. It held something solid. Bulky. Rachel opened it almost absently, telling herself she was wasting her time. What had she expected to find, anyway?
A mud-caked leather wallet fell into her hand.
She stared at it blankly for a moment, thinking that it must have been Roger’s. He’d obviously ruined it at some point and had switched to another.
So why had he kept this one?
She opened the wallet slowly, her fingers trembling.
A photograph stared up at her from a yellowed, weathered driver’s license.
The wallet had belonged to Albert R. Jennings.
Rachel’s long-lost father.
8
LUCAS WAS AWAKENED Christmas morning by a high-pitched shout of delight.
“I got my bicycle! Hey, everybody, Santa brought my bicycle!”
Lucas yawned and shoved a hand through his hair, noting that it was just after six-thirty. Christmas started early when there was a kid in the house, he thought.
He pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, sliding his feet into his shoes without bothering with socks. And then he headed for the living room to see what else Santa had left beneath the tree—as if he hadn’t helped place the stuff there only hours before.
Clay was practically bouncing off the walls of the living room. “Uncle Lucas, Uncle Lucas! Look what I got!”
Lucas made a production of admiring the shiny ten-speed bicycle he and Wade had spent nearly two hours putting together the night before. It had seemed like a simple enough project—until they’d realized the instructions were written in Martian. Lucas knew computers and Wade knew police procedures, but neither of them was a wizard with a wrench.
Lucas nodded toward the pile of presents beneath the tree. “Looks like Santa left more than one gift.”
Clay nodded eagerly. “Daddy said for me to wait until everyone was up before I opened them. Are you up now, Uncle Lucas?”
Bundled into a fuzzy bathrobe, Emily slipped a steaming mug of coffee into Lucas’s hand.
Lucas nodded at her in gratitude before turning back to the excited boy. “I’m up now.”
Clay promptly pounced on the stack of brightly wrapped presents. Wade and Emily snuggled together on the couch and watched, Emily snapping pictures every few minutes, Wade smiling indulgently. Lucas sat in a comfortable armchair, sipping his coffee and wondering how it would feel to play Santa for his own kid.
An unlikely prospect, to say the least.
After exclaiming in delight over his haul from Santa, Clay turned his attention to the gifts remaining under the tree. “What about these?”
“Read the tags,” Wade said. “You can hand them out.”
Clay distributed the packages hastily, eager to find out what was in each one, whether they were for him or the others.
Emily gasped when she opened the diamond earrings from her brother. “Lucas, they’re beautiful! But this is too much.”
He smiled and shook his head. “It’s the first present I’ve given you in fifteen years. Enjoy.”
She was already fastening them into her earlobes. The diamond engagement ring that had been her gift from Wade glittered on her left hand.
Wade seemed almost as pleased with the fishing reel Lucas had selected for him. “This is great, Lucas. The nicest one I’ve ever had. Thanks.”
Lucas nodded. “You’ve obviously made my little sister very happy. I’m glad she met you...even if you are a cop,” he added wryly.
Emily swiped at her eyes. “You really are a very sweet man, Lucas.”
He cleared his throat and took another sip of his coffee to avoid having to reply.
Clay opened his gift from Lucas. “Oh, wow. Cool. A Rebelcom. Thank you, Uncle Lucas.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it.”
Emily looked a bit puzzled as she studied the beeping black plastic box. “What did you say that is?”
“A Rebelcom,” Clay repeated, showing her the illuminated screen. “It’s a portable computer game system. Tommy Porter has one, and it has the coolest games in the world on it.”
“All nonviolent and entertainingly educational,” Lucas assured them.
“Designed and marketed by Rebel Software Corporation of Los Angeles, California,” Wade murmured, reading from the box the game had come in.
Emily looked at Lucas with suddenly narrowed eyes. “Rebel Software? Is that...?”
He shrugged. “When I got to California, I hooked up with another guy who was interested in computer games. We were in the right place at the right time. We found a couple of backers, hired a few brainy computer geeks, and we’ve all done pretty well for ourselves.”
“You haven’t opened your presents, Uncle Lucas,” Clay said.
Lucas had been deliberately postponing that. He never quite knew how to act when people gave him things.
“Open the one from Daddy and me first,” Clay insisted.
Lucas nodded and opened a wrapped box to reveal a pair of black leather driving gloves. “These are really nice,” he said, feeling awkward. “Thanks, Clay. You, too, Wade.”
“I helped pick them out,” Clay said importantly. “Daddy has some and he likes them a lot. Do you like yours a lot, Uncle Lucas?”
“I like them a lot,” Lucas assured the boy with a smile.
“Now open the present Mom got you.”
Lucas still hadn’t quite adjusted to hearing the boy refer to Emily as “Mom.” Judging from Emily’s misty expression, she hadn’t either—but she obviously liked hearing it.
Lucas peeled the wrapping paper away from Emily’s gift to reveal an intricately designed mahogany box, the top an inlaid mosaic of assorted exotic woods. The beautifully worked box had obviously been crafted by a talented artisan. Lucas studied it closely. “This is great, Emily. Was it made locally?”
“Yes. Paul Cabot is a local woodworker whose boxes are becoming very popular at local craft shows and galleries.”
“I can see why. The guy is good.”
Lucas pressed a nearly invisible latch to open the box. He went very still when he saw the items nestled into the velvet lining.
“You didn’t take anything with you when you left fifteen years ago,” Emily said quietly. “Those are some of the things I thought you might like to have.”
The heavy gold pocket watch had belonged to Lucas’s maternal grandfather. His mother, who’d died when Lucas was only five, had kept it for him. There was also a small silver frame holding an old photo of Lucas’s mother. He didn’t remember her very well, but this photo matched his hazy memory of her—pale, fragile-looking, visibly nervous and unhappy. Whether she’d been that way before she’d married Josiah McBride Jr., Lucas couldn’t have said, but marriage to the stern, difficult man couldn’t have been easy for a woman with depressive tendencies.
There were some who’d said she’d died of pneumonia because she simply hadn’t wanted to live.
The
final item in the box was a slender, aged, soft-leather-bound Bible. On the inside, inscribed in his mother’s flowery handwriting, were her name, Josiah’s name and the date of their wedding. Beneath that was Lucas’s name and the date of his birth.
Lucas closed the Bible and held it for a moment in both hands before setting it back into the box, along with the pocket watch and the small framed photo. “Thank you, Emily,” he said quietly.
“You’re welcome. If there’s anything you want that belonged to Dad...”
“No. These things are all I want.”
She nodded, her eyes a bit damp.
Clay broke the sentimental moment by diving back into his gifts, wondering aloud what to play with first.
Emily stood, tightening the sash on her robe. “I’ll start breakfast.”
Lucas and Wade both started to rise. “Need any help?” Wade asked.
She shook her head and motioned for them to remain seated. “You guys stay in here with Clay. I have everything under control.”
Clay climbed unselfconsciously into Lucas’s lap, holding his Rebelcom. “Will you show me how to work it, Uncle Lucas?”
Lucas glanced at Wade, wondering if he minded sharing Clay’s attention on this Christmas morning. But Wade was smiling, so Lucas settled the boy more comfortably on his knee. “Turn it on here. This button controls the left side of the screen, and this one...”
Clay nestled against Lucas’s chest and listened intently to his soon-to-be-uncle’s instructions.
The telephone rang just as they finished breakfast a little more than half an hour later. Emily smiled and stood. “I’ll get it. I’m sure it’s one of our cousins, wishing us Merry Christmas.”
But a moment later, wearing a curious expression, Emily lowered the kitchen extension phone and motioned for Lucas. “It’s for you. She, um, didn’t identify herself.”
Lucas knew who it was even before he heard her voice.
“Lucas? It’s Rachel. I’m sorry to interrupt you so early on Christmas morning, but I need to talk to you.”
He heard the strain in her voice and he knew immediately that something was very wrong. “What is it?”
