A Forever Kind of Family

by Brenda Harlen

  “But you didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “He might have been Brock Lawrie on TV, but he was still my dad, and watching him kiss other women on-screen was just too weird.”

  “I guess it would be,” Kenna agreed. “I still watch The Light of Dawn sometimes—and Brock and Lorelei still have some powerful chemistry.”

  “Which is probably why my mother hates that story line.”

  “It must be hard—to be married to a man who’s famous for seducing women in front of the camera.”

  Harper sighed. “It wouldn’t be nearly so hard if it was just in front of the camera.”

  * * *

  Aubrey Renforth had made a lot of mistakes in her life but none that she regretted more right now than walking away from her family.

  For a long time, she’d held her parents and her brother responsible for the estrangement. After all, they were the ones who had refused to come to the wedding, insisting that she was too young to get married—and that Jeremy was too old for her.

  So she’d built her own life with her husband, they’d created their own family, and she trusted that she’d followed the path she’d been meant to follow. Her only connection to the life she’d left behind was Tracy Blaine, her best friend since sixth grade.

  Over the years, Aubrey and Tracy had kept in touch regularly if not frequently. And though Aubrey was certain she didn’t miss anyone that she’d left behind, she looked forward to Tracy’s emails and the glimpses of the town that had once been her home.

  It was through her friend that she’d learned about Darren’s wedding to Melissa and, less than a year after that, her father’s stroke and her mother’s subsequent decision to move them both into an assisted-living facility. Two years later, Tracy had sent her a link to Oliver’s birth announcement in the online version of the local paper. Aubrey printed the notice and kept it safe inside her jewelry box.

  Throughout all the years and those major events, she’d never once gone back to Charisma—she’d never wanted to. While the aging of her parents was sad, it was also inevitable; the deaths of her brother and his wife were shocking and devastating. But it was her concern for their child—the nephew she’d never even met—that propelled her into action and brought her to where she was now.

  24 Springhill Garden.

  She looked at the address on the square of paper in her hand and matched it to the number on the front of the house. Then she tucked the note back into her pocket and pressed the bell. She heard the faint echo of its chime through the door and clutched the handle of her purse with both hands.

  The woman who answered the door was younger than Aubrey had expected and quite attractive, with warm brown eyes and a quick smile.

  “Can I help you?”

  She held out her hand. “I’m Aubrey Renforth—Darren’s sister.”

  “Oh.” The dark eyes widened in evident surprise but she took the proffered hand automatically. “I’m Harper Ross—a friend of Darren and Melissa’s. Are you here...? I mean...do you know...about the accident?”

  “I was away for a few weeks, but I came as soon as I heard.”

  “And I guess you didn’t stop by to stand on the porch,” Harper said, stepping back from the door so that Aubrey could enter the spacious foyer.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked, leading the way to the kitchen. She opened the fridge, peeked inside. “I’ve got lemonade and sweet tea.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I’m so sorry you weren’t informed of the arrangements,” Harper said, sounding both sympathetic and sincerely apologetic as she took a seat at the granite island and gestured for Aubrey to do the same. “Unfortunately, no one knew how to get in touch with you.”

  She dropped her gaze. “Regrettably, my brother and I lost touch quite a few years back.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Aubrey nodded in acknowledgment of her sympathy. “But in the end, no matter what has come before, blood is thicker than water, isn’t it?”

  “You’re here to see Oliver,” the other woman guessed.

  “I think that would be a good start.”

  Chapter Seven

  Harper wasn’t sure what to make of that cryptic response. In any event—blood relative or not—she wanted to know a little bit more about this woman before she introduced her to Oliver.

  She opened the cupboard and took out two glasses, filled them with sweet tea. Aubrey had said she didn’t want anything, but Harper needed a minute to gather her thoughts and pouring the drinks bought her that time.

  “Where is my nephew?” the visitor asked, obviously impatient to meet him.

  “Napping.”

  “Oh.” Aubrey folded her hands on the counter.

  Harper noted the rings on her finger: a wide gold wedding band and an engagement ring with a cluster of diamonds. Her fingers were thin, delicate, her skin so pale that her veins were visible beneath the surface.

  Darren had been a big man—broad shouldered and solidly built, and at first glance, Harper would never have believed they were siblings. But there was some resemblance between Oliver and this woman, evident in the shape of their eyes if not the color—Oliver had inherited the deep clear blue from his mother—and the subtle dent in the middle of their chins.

  “I’m sure you can appreciate that this has been an incredibly difficult time for Oliver. For all of us, really.”

  “I’m grieving, too,” Aubrey told her.

  “I know. But I have to ask—when did you last see your brother?”

  The other woman dropped her gaze. “Eighteen years ago,” she admitted. “I was only eighteen myself when I left Charisma to go to Presbyterian College in South Carolina. That’s where I met Jeremy, and we fell in love. I brought him home at Thanksgiving to meet my family, but he was older—and divorced—and it was obvious to both of us that my parents didn’t approve of our relationship.

  “It was only a few weeks after the New Year that Jeremy was offered a job in Washington, and he asked me to go with him. My parents forbade me to go, but I was a legal adult and didn’t need their permission and I told them so. My mother said that if I went, I shouldn’t bother to come back. So I didn’t.”

  Harper sipped her tea. “Eighteen years is a long time to be out of touch with family.”

  “It is,” Aubrey agreed, sounding genuinely regretful. “And I never planned to be gone so long—the years just seemed to slip away.”

  “Are you still living in Washington?”

  “No. We moved to Virginia about five years ago. We live just outside Martinsville now.”

  Harper wondered how it was that this woman had been living less than a hundred miles away and never made the effort to breach that distance to visit her brother and his family. Even more concerning was why she’d made the effort now.

  Aubrey rubbed at the condensation on the outside of her glass. “When can I see him—Oliver?”

  “He’ll be waking up shortly.”

  As if on cue, Harper heard through the baby monitor the telltale sounds of Oliver stirring in his crib. Thankfully, he awakened from his naps much more gradually and peacefully than he awakened in the night.

  “That’s him, isn’t it?” Aubrey asked eagerly.

  Harper understood that the other woman was anxious to finally meet her nephew, and while she knew that she had no right or reason to refuse, she was wary.

  But she led the way to the baby’s room, where Oliver was playing in his crib, cooing and babbling nonsense. When she peeked in through the doorway, she saw he was sitting up in his crib and chewing on one of the ears of his beanbag puppy, but he dropped the toy when he saw her.

  He grasped the bars of the crib and hauled himself up, bouncing excitedly on the springy mattress. “Up-up-up.”

  Harper smiled. “Yes, we’ll get you up.”

  Then his gaze shifted past her to Aubrey, and the wide smile that creased his face slipped a little. He’d never shown any hesitation about
meeting new people, but he was a little wary now.

  “This is your aunt Aubrey,” Harper told him. “Your daddy’s sister.”

  Oliver’s smile returned in full force. “Da-da-da.”

  Harper gently brushed a soft curl off his forehead. “You’re a clever boy, aren’t you?”

  “Da-da-da,” he repeated.

  “Can I?” Aubrey asked, indicating that she wanted to pick him up.

  Harper noted that Oliver looked more curious than uncertain now, so she shrugged and stepped back from the crib. “Sure.”

  “Hello, Oliver.” Tears shone in the other woman’s eyes as she approached the baby. “Did you have a good nap?”

  “Up-up-up,” Oliver demanded.

  Aubrey smiled as she lifted him from his crib. “You’re a big boy, aren’t you? Built like your daddy.”

  “Da-da-da.”

  His aunt put a hand under his bottom to support him. “I think his diaper needs changing.”

  “No doubt,” she agreed, reaching for the baby.

  “I don’t mind doing it,” Aubrey said, already moving toward the changing table.

  “Okay,” Harper reluctantly agreed.

  She hovered behind Aubrey as she gently laid the baby down on the padded surface. There was no reason to think the other woman wasn’t competent, but something about her proprietary behavior made Harper uneasy.

  Aubrey completed the diaper change quickly and effortlessly. She even remembered to keep the little boy covered so that the cool air didn’t trigger an automatic response. It had taken Harper a long time and far too many accidents before she remembered to have the clean diaper ready prior to removing the dirty one.

  “You obviously have a lot of experience at that,” she commented.

  “I love babies,” Aubrey told her.

  “Do you have any children of your own?”

  Oliver’s aunt shook her head as she dropped the dirty diaper into the bin beside the table. “Jeremy—my husband—has four from his first marriage, but we don’t have any together.”

  Her matter-of-fact tone made it difficult for Harper to decipher how she felt about her childless status. But she suspected, based on her sudden appearance in Oliver’s life, that she wished her situation was different.

  “It was a shock to learn that my baby brother had a baby of his own,” Aubrey continued.

  “But you never wanted to see Oliver—until now?”

  “I wanted to—I just didn’t know how to make it happen.” The other woman’s eyes filled with tears. “Now it’s too late to reconcile with Darren, but it’s not too late to do the right thing for his son.” She snapped his pants up and lifted Oliver into her arms again.

  “What is it that you think is the right thing for his son?” Harper asked her.

  “To take him home with me so that he can be raised by family.”

  * * *

  “I hope that’s when you showed her the door,” Ryan said when Harper recounted the story of Aubrey’s visit for him over dinner that night.

  “No, but I did show her the court order legalizing our guardianship and assured her that we were going to honor Melissa and Darren’s wishes by raising Oliver together.”

  “How did she respond to that?”

  “She didn’t seem very pleased,” Harper admitted. “She kept insisting that he should be with family.”

  “She didn’t have any contact with her brother in all the years that I knew him and suddenly she’s all about family?”

  Harper briefly summarized Aubrey’s explanation for the estrangement.

  “Almost two decades is a long time to hold a grudge,” he commented.

  She nodded. “Too often people put things off until another day, only to find that they’ve missed their chance. I think she wanted to reconnect with her brother and assumed it would happen someday, but now it’s too late, so she’s reaching out to Oliver instead.”

  “You don’t think it’s suspicious that she suddenly decided to come back now, after so many years?”

  “No,” she said again. “I mean, it makes sense that she’d want to reach out upon hearing about her brother’s death.”

  “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “Or maybe she wanted to see if there was any kind of inheritance.”

  “If that was her intention, she’ll be disappointed, because everything Darren and Melissa had is in trust for Oliver.”

  “And who controls that trust?”

  She frowned at the question. “We do.”

  “Because we’re his guardians,” he pointed out.

  “You really think Darren’s estranged sister came here upon hearing the news of her brother’s death for the purpose of ascertaining if he’d left any money and—if he did—to offer to take care of his orphaned son to get her hands on that money?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ryan admitted. “I’d almost forgotten that Darren even had a sister until Oliver was born. When he asked me to be the little guy’s godfather, I suggested that he might want to choose someone from his family, and he said there was just his sister—and no.”

  “That seems an odd response,” Harper noted.

  He nodded. “Of course, I didn’t push for more of an explanation, because I figured if there was something he wanted me to know, he’d tell me.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, frustrated that he wouldn’t ever know now what his friend had meant.

  And now it was too late. All he could do was honor Darren’s wishes to care for Oliver, and that was what he intended to do.

  * * *

  The following Saturday afternoon, Harper was in the cereal aisle of the grocery store comparing the nutritional labels of Multi-Grain Cheerios, which was her usual purchase, and Honey Nut Cheerios, Ryan’s request, when Fran Murphy—a retired school bus driver who lived down the street—drew her cart up alongside Harper’s.

  “Hello, Harper.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Murphy.”

  The older woman reached past her to take a box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios from the shelf.

  After depositing the cereal in her basket, she gestured to the package of disposable diapers in Harper’s. “You know, my daughter-in-law buys all of her baby supplies at the supercenter in Chapel Hill—she says that she gets twice as many diapers for the same price there.”

  “That’s quite a distance to go just to save a few dollars on diapers.”

  “Not just diapers,” Fran said. “Baby wipes and formula and powder and shampoo.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I’m out that way,” Harper promised.

  Mrs. Murphy nodded, apparently satisfied with that response. “How is young Oliver?”

  “He’s doing okay.”

  “Did you know I used to babysit sometimes?” Fran asked. “When Melissa and Darren wanted to go out to see a movie or have a romantic meal somewhere, they’d give me a call to look after the baby.”

  Harper nodded. “Melissa told me how much she appreciated knowing Oliver was in good hands when she wanted a bit of a break.”

  “Caring for a baby is a full-time job, as I’m sure you now realize.”

  “I do,” she agreed. “Which is why I’m shopping for groceries and Oliver is home with Ryan.”

  The other woman chuckled. “Well, if you and Ryan ever want to get out together, I’d be happy to sit with the little one.”

  “Oh. Um...thank you, but I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “A night out might be welcome even if it’s not necessary.”

  Harper opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. She got the impression that the older woman thought her relationship with Ryan was something more than it was, and it was instinctive to want to clarify the situation for her. But in the end, she just wanted to get her groceries and get home.

  “You’ll remember what I said about calling me to babysit if ever you need me?” Fran prompted.

  “I will,” Harper promised.

  “Then I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
>
  Harper thanked her again and started to push her cart forward as Mrs. Murphy continued the opposite way. She was nearly at the end of the aisle before she realized that she hadn’t decided which cereal to buy. She backtracked and put both boxes in her cart.

  * * *

  When Harper got home from the grocery store, Ryan had Oliver secured in his high chair playing with the homemade dough she’d made for him, so he helped her unpack and put away the groceries.

  Shopping had been much simpler when he was just feeding himself—mostly from the frozen-food section. He’d bought a lot of meals that could be taken out of a box and put directly into the microwave. Easy cooking and easier cleanup.

  Harper was a fan of fresh fruits and vegetables—and salad. He’d never known anyone who ate as much salad as she did.

  He’d brought home a couple of salted caramel brownies from The Sweet Spot one day, just because he’d been near the bakery and decided that he was in the mood for something sweet. Harper had looked at the brownies with unmistakable longing—and then at him as if he was the devil for putting temptation in her path.

  And he knew that she had been tempted—but she’d resisted.

  He’d eaten both of them for dessert that night; she’d had a bowl of strawberries.

  “I got chicken for dinner,” Harper said. “Do you want to grill it or should I make a stir-fry?”

  Over the past few weeks, they’d fallen into a routine of making and eating dinner together. It wasn’t anything they’d planned—it had just happened that way—so it hadn’t occurred to him to tell her that he had other plans.

  “Actually...I have a...um...date tonight,” he told her now.

  “Oh.” Harper put the package of chicken breasts in the refrigerator. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry—I should have said something earlier.”

  “You don’t have to clear your schedule with me,” she assured him.

  “I didn’t because, honestly, I forgot about it until Whitney texted me half an hour ago.”

  “It’s okay,” she said again, putting a rack of ribs in the freezer. “Have a good time.”

  Her tone was neutral—as if she honestly didn’t care that he was going out or even whom he was going with. And she probably didn’t. She’d made it more than clear four years ago that the one night they’d spent together would not be repeated. And one sizzling kiss aside, there had been absolutely no indication that her opinion on the matter had changed since then.