Her Sister (Search For Love series)

by Karen Rose Smith

  She looked around the room but she didn't move forward. Instead she asked, "Are you going to fight?"

  "We won't fight. One thing is clear. We want what's best for you."

  Amanda suddenly stood. "I have something to say, and I want all of you to understand I've put a lot of thought into this." She looked straight at her granddaughter. "Shara, if you don't feel you can raise this baby, I understand. Clare, if you don't feel you can raise this baby, I understand. But I think the three of us, together, could. If I have to close Yesteryear to be daycare you can trust, I will do that. But more importantly, if neither of you want to raise Shara's baby, I will do that, on my own if I have to. I will not let another child slip away."

  Clare knew the stunned expression on her father's face said it all. He never expected that commitment to come out of his ex-wife's mouth, and neither had Clare.

  They all talked in circles after that, not really getting anywhere, not until Shara said, "I want to do the interview."

  Shara had plopped down on the floor cross-legged while Clare sat on the hassock beside Joe's chair.

  "This could be in front of the world, honey," Clare said. "Do you really want to put your life out there like that? Do you want to talk about the past few months? Your relationship with me? What happened with Brad? What happened with Justin? Are you really ready to go public with all that?"

  "I don't want another girl like me to run away and think she's okay on her own. I don't want anyone else to think they can meet somebody on line and trust them. If I don't talk about this, who's going to?"

  Shara was right about that. "Mom?" Clare asked.

  "I want to do the interview with you."

  "Dad?" Clare asked.

  "Count me out. I don't want to be associated with the shooting. I don't want the notoriety. And I especially don't want the press."

  "All right then. It looks as if I'll call Tessa and tell her the three of us are going to do it."

  Max stood. "I think we've all had enough of this for one night. Give it another twenty-four hours," he suggested with a pointed look at Clare and Shara and Amanda. "Make sure it still seems like good sense then."

  ****

  Up early the following morning to get the shop in order before she and Max drove to Pittsburgh, Amanda sat at her kitchen table with her laptop, checking her e-mail. She had a hundred things on her mind at least. The discussion at Clare's last night uppermost. She hadn't changed her mind about any of it—not about adopting the baby, not about doing the interview. Joe would be driving her and Shara and Clare to Connecticut on Wednesday, taping the interview on Thursday, and driving back Friday. An executive for the news program had offered to fly them in or buy their train tickets. But instead of spending time in an airport or taking a train, Joe said he could drive them and they could stop as much or little as they wanted.

  She wasn't worried about being away from Yesteryear. She'd been on buying trips before, and her assistant and her two clerks had handled her absence just fine. But she was worried about Max—what he was thinking and what he was feeling. At least now he told her exactly what he was thinking, but the feeling part—

  He didn't want to do this interview because he didn't want to delve into the pain. She couldn't blame him. But Shara and Clare needed this interview. Maybe, so did a million other moms and daughters out there who would watch it. Maybe by doing the interview, all three of them would figure out what was best to do.

  After the laptop booted up, her e-mail downloaded. Her heart practically stopped when she studied the address on one of them. Schuster Laboratories. She clicked on it and read it for what it was—a notice that information had been loaded into her account on the Schuster website. She had it bookmarked. All she had to do was sign in with her password and some of the uncertainty of the past twenty-seven years might end.

  Her cell phone rang and at first she wasn't going to pick it up from its charging dock on the counter. Maybe to put off the inevitable, she crossed to it and checked the called ID. It was Max.

  Maybe he already knew. Maybe he'd already checked his account at the Schuster website.

  She picked up the phone. "Do you know?" she asked him.

  "I didn't check my account yet. Did you?"

  "No."

  "I'll be right over. We should do this together."

  That thinking was progress, she supposed. They'd done more things together in the past week than they had in the past twenty-seven years. Did he want to do this together for his benefit or for hers? Did it even matter?

  He clicked off before she'd say she'd wait. Typical Max.

  But she loved the typical Max. She always had and she always would.

  Not ten minutes later, he was standing at her door, and she was letting him in. He was dressed in jeans and a white Oxford shirt, open at the neck with the sleeves rolled up. He was as ruggedly appealing as ever and she let that distract her for a moment...just a moment. But then she was turning away from him, going to her laptop, moving her cursor to the bookmark, clicking on the Schuster site.

  Max closed the door and came to stand behind her. "We must have been downloading e-mail at the same time," he said.

  "We must have," she murmured, typing in her password, entering the portal that could give them gloriously happy news or the limbo they had existed in ever since Lynnie had been taken.

  He was crouching down beside her now, studying the document as she opened it. They both read the findings at the same time. They both understood exactly what the document was telling them.

  While Amanda took a couple of deep breaths and swallowed hard, Max stood. When she looked up at him, she felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her. He looked as if any hope he'd once held had finally died.

  She said it first. "She's not Lynnie."

  "No, she's not."

  "That's why I didn't feel anything. That's why Clare didn't feel anything. Oh, Max, we're never going to know."

  He pulled her up to him then and enfolded her into his arms. "We're never going to know," he agreed, holding onto her tightly, as tightly as he had the night they made love. After a short while, he pulled away from her. "We have to call Amy and tell her we're not coming."

  Amanda tried to get hold of herself, tried to push all her dreams away, tried to claim reality and deal with it. "She probably received that e-mail this morning, too."

  "I'm sure she did. She's probably happy about it. I don't think she really wanted to know where her parents are. She didn't want the complications of dealing with the past."

  "But we still have them. Come with us to New Haven, Max, please."

  He shook his head. "No. You do what you have to do."

  She swallowed hard again. There would be no changing his mind. He'd always been stubborn. He'd always been decisive. He'd always been Max. He was going to put this episode with Amy Fields behind him and pretend it never happened.

  "Why don't I make us some breakfast. I meant what I said about adopting Shara's baby if she and Clare don't want to raise it. We should talk about that."

  "Not this morning, Amanda. Not yet. Since we're not driving to Pittsburgh today, I have a pile of work on my desk that I can attend to. Do you want me to call Amy?"

  She was hurt at his attitude but she understood why he wanted to shut down, why he wanted to bury himself in work. So she said, "I'll call Amy. Why don't you call Clare."

  Max took out the phone, obviously anxious to get the deed done. He moved to the living room so he could have a private conversation with Clare while she had one with Amy.

  Separate rooms...separate lives all over again.

  ****

  This time, Clare called Joe. No matter that the day had barely begun at eight a.m., no matter she was supposed to be at work in an hour, no matter she should talk to her mother first and tell her how sorry she was. Her father hadn't sounded heartbroken but he had sounded resigned. Her mother—she'd be seeing her this evening. They were going to talk about what they needed to take alon
g to Connecticut, what they should wear. This would be Shara's first day back at school and they could talk about how that went, too. There was so much for the three of them to talk about, including Amy Fields.

  Joe picked up on the second ring. "Clare?"

  His voice held a question, maybe because of the way he'd left the other night. They hadn't finished the conversation they'd started before her parents had arrived. After they'd left, he'd gone, too. He hadn't known where he stood. What with all the turmoil she was in, he'd obviously decided not to press. She'd been grateful for that then. But now?

  "Amy isn't my sister. The DNA results came through."

  He didn't question her about the results. He didn't ask her what she was feeling. He said simply, "I'll be right over."

  She didn't protest this time because she wanted him here beside her.

  After Joe opened the door, he took one look at her, folded his arms around her and guided her to the sofa. They sat there in silence until she tucked one leg under her and faced him. "I knew she couldn't be Lynnie. I think I'm more relieved than disappointed because deep down in my soul I knew."

  "But your parents are another matter?"

  "Mom's probably heartbroken. More than ever, she'll be ready to adopt Shara's baby. She wants to fill that hole that Lynnie left."

  She studied Joe's face, the lines around his eyes, the strong jaw, the mouth that had kissed her with promises of a lot more to come if she was willing. "I have to ask you something," she said.

  "Ask."

  "I need to fill that gaping hole, too. In a way, I have to make our family whole again. The way for me to do that is to raise Shara's baby. For good or bad, right or wrong, I'm going to convince her to have her baby, to let me and Mom help her, to mend the past and look toward the future. I don't know how I'm going to do it, and I suspect all of our lives are going to be a mess for a while."

  "You haven't asked me anything yet," he said seriously.

  That's because she was afraid. She hadn't asked him because she hadn't taken any risks in a very long time. The question was in her heart. It just wouldn't come out of her mouth. But finally after a deep breath, and a prayer for courage, she asked, "Do you want to get involved with me…with my family, or is all of this just too much to take on?"

  His answer was a slow smile. His answer was opening his arms to her. His answer was clear. "I'll take on you and your family, Clare, because I think we can have a good life together. After all, I've always wanted to be a dad…or a grandpa."

  Clare wrapped her arms around Joe's neck and kissed him.

  ****

  Chapter Thirteen

  On Wednesday evening at the edge of dusk, Max did something he hadn't done for at least the past five years. He drove to Pine Hill and parked across the street from the house with green siding and black shutters where he and Amanda, Lynnie and Clare had lived. They'd still had boxes to unpack when Lynnie had been stolen. They hadn't really even found their life there yet. He'd moved his family to the suburbs, a small town out of the city because he'd finally been making some decent money, and the price of a house had been more reasonable there. Lynnie and Clare had had their own rooms. There was a guest room, a den for him, a family room besides a living room. Every night Amanda had cooked dinner and he'd tried to get home at a decent hour so they could all sit down together. It had been a stable life, the life he'd envisioned, a good life. He had a wife to love and children to nurture, and more than he'd ever dreamed of.

  Now he studied the house whose siding was faded. It would soon need a new roof and the shutters replaced or repainted. He wondered if the inside had been changed drastically.

  He also wondered if Clare and Shara and Amanda had gotten settled in their hotel in New Haven. Then he remembered, Joe had driven them. He was looking out for them...looking after them.

  Max shifted in his seat feeling uncomfortable with that thought. Uncomfortable...because that was his job.

  However, he'd abdicated the position of caretaker, provider, protector and defender years ago. When Lynnie had been kidnapped? When he and Amanda divorced? When Clare had gotten pregnant? All life events that had shaken up his world, and Amanda's, too. In some ways, she'd weathered the storms better than he had.

  Suddenly the door to the house opened. A couple stepped out who both looked to be about Clare's age. After them, three kids tumbled over the threshold onto the porch. There was a boy about eight, a girl who could have been five or six, and then there was a little one...a little girl who toddled out who couldn't have been more than three. She had pigtails tied with pink ribbons. Amanda used to fix Lynnie's hair that way.

  All at once, Max couldn't stop the parade of pictures flashing in his mind, so many pictures that he'd kept tightly locked in an album in his heart—Amanda kneading dough to make sticky buns just like her mother had...Lynnie on a booster seat at the table, mashed potatoes all over her face as she fed herself like the big girl Amanda told her she was...Clare in a pink tutu and ballet shoes practicing for her recital, looking up at him and asking him what he thought of her pirouette. The pictures of Lynnie he'd kept stowed away seemed bigger than life as she wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a smooch on the cheek...as she held his hand when they crossed the street...as she cuddled against him in a pink flannel nightgown when he'd read her a story.

  At first he thought the pain was in his shoulder again. It was still sore and throbbed and gave him fits when he did things he wasn't supposed to do. But the pain wasn't in his shoulder.

  It was in his heart. Sitting outside this house, stepping back in time, remembering the family he once had, the little girl he'd once held in his arms, he couldn't keep the pain locked up in a box any more. With the pictures it burst open, practically overwhelming him. As he watched the family climb into their mini-van and drive away, he felt wetness on his hand. When he looked down another drop fell.

  He was crying.

  Grown men didn't cry.

  Strong men didn't cry. That's what his father would have said. But his father had been a drunk and mean and what the hell had he known?

  Max couldn't sit there another moment...couldn't remember a perfect life...a destroyed life...a little girl who would never return. He switched on the ignition in spite of his blurred vision. He backhanded his eyes, willing the tears to stop. Feeling like a fool, he drove back to his apartment.

  After he parked and let himself inside, he went numb. He wanted a drink so badly his hand shook. The memories could drive him to drink again. He should call his sponsor—

  But he knew what the man would tell him. Scott would advise him to feel. Feel was the last thing he wanted to do.

  Yet the photo review in his mind wouldn't quit. He sank down into a recliner he hardly ever used—sitting still was always too dangerous because it provoked introspection he avoided—and let the memories stream like a never-ending movie. The tears burned again. But this time he didn't focus on them...he focused on his wedding day, Clare's birth, Lynnie's baptism. Amanda kept photos of it all and he knew she often sat and cried over them. But he didn't need the albums. All the pictures were in his heart.

  He wasn't aware of time as he sank into memories...as he re-experienced love and pain. He'd kept everything bottled up for years because he thought that was what he was supposed to do. But what he was supposed to do had lost him everything…and everyone.

  Sitting in the dark, he ran his hand over his face, heaved in a shuddering breath, and knew the life he'd been living had been no life at all. He needed to change that. He needed to wake up before his life was over, even if he never knew what happened to Lynnie. He could still grab some happiness before he lost everything that mattered most.

  Since his return from New Mexico, he hadn't been able to forget his night in Albuquerque with Amanda—not the passion, not the fervor, not the pleasure, not the…love. He still knew Amanda well enough to acknowledge the fact that she never would have made love with him again if she didn't still love him.
>
  Maybe the same was true for him.

  So now what?

  Now he needed some light. He switched on the floor lamp and checked his watch. It was midnight! For hours, he'd been sitting there replaying his life. He had too many regrets. He'd made too many mistakes. The latest? Not accompanying Amanda, Shara and Clare to New Haven and taking part in the interview. He should have gone with them. He shouldn't have fought the idea of talking to the journalist. He should have supported Amanda and Clare and Shara by participating, giving them moral support and jumping into a conversation they should all have.

  Hindsight was 20/20, true. But the past could teach if he'd let it.

  He loved Amanda and he wanted her back. That he was sure of. He wasn't going to stand by again and watch his future head south.

  New Haven was a five-hour drive. He would get to that interview. He would prove to Amanda that he was the man she'd always known he could be.

  ****

  Amanda was following Tessa, Clare, and Shara down a corridor to the set where they'd be taping their interview when her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Maybe it was Max, wishing them good luck at least.

  But it wasn't Max. It was Gillian. She'd sent a text that said—I know the taping will go well, and you'll help lots of families. E-mail me and let me know how it goes.

  Amanda had spoken to Gillian last night when Gillian had called to ask about Shara and how she was faring now that she was home. Amanda had filled her in on everything and she suspected that they were going to stay in touch. She hoped so. Gillian was a special person.

  They'd almost reached the studio when Amanda heard her name.

  "Amanda, wait."

  It sounded like Max. It couldn't be Max. He was back in York.

  "Amanda," he called again, and then he was there, looking out of breath and harried, his pale blue Oxford shirt looking a bit wrinkled, his old jeans faded from many washings.

  "Max, what are you doing here?"

  "I thought I'd have plenty of time. I thought I could drive here, see you at the hotel, change clothes—"