by Gayle Roper
My twin sister had stolen from me.
I sank onto the bed, feeling betrayed once again and surprised at how much it hurt. You’d think I’d have grown armor plating after so many years and so many offenses. So what if she thought the pin was costume jewelry and didn’t realize its value? This wasn’t like a teenage girl taking her sister’s favorite sweater. This was one adult purposely going into another adult’s room and searching for something to filch. I glanced around this room at all Tori’s wonderful, expensive things, knowing these were only the things she had here. What wonders were still back at her suite at the SeaSide? Why take from me when she had all this and more?
“What’s the matter, Mom?” Chloe asked from the doorway. She and Jenna were staring at me, unsure what was wrong but knowing I was truly upset.
I took a deep breath, trying to think how to explain without making Tori sound as wicked as she was. Princess lay pressed against my leg, looking at me with concerned eyes. I petted her absently, glad for her comfort.
“This jewelry is mine, not Tori’s.”
“Yours?” Chloe walked into the room, Jenna on her tail. “How come I never saw it before?”
“Because I got it yesterday at the estate sale.”
As I spoke, Jenna reached up and took off the little dog. She held it out to me. “We didn’t know.”
I managed a small smile for her. “I know. I’m not upset at you, either of you.” Of course I’d be happy to strangle Tori. “I’d let you keep the little thing except it’s got a value of about three thousand dollars.”
Both girls blinked and stared at the dog in astonishment.
“Those are marquise-cut sapphires,” I explained. “And those are real diamonds.”
“Really?” Chloe was fascinated now that she knew I wasn’t upset with her or Jenna. “Can we see the rest of the stuff?”
We spent an absorbing hour studying the jewelry and trying to come up with the best descriptions of the pieces for when Madge and I sold them with Sam Pierce’s help. One positive thing Tori’s theft accomplished was taking Jenna’s mind off Ruthie for a while. When Drew came for us, she was pretty nearly her usual, perky self.
We arrived at Citizens Bank Park and found our way to our seats about midway up the stands. Chloe’s reaction to being at the Phillies game was the same one I’d had the first time I attended a game.
“They’re so small!” She pointed to the little men out on the field. Courtesy of games on television, she was used to the men looking large as they filled the screen. She was also used to the cameras following the ball. When the first batter hit a long fly and it disappeared against the backdrop of people sitting opposite us, she jumped to her feet. “Where did it go?”
She and Jenna became bored halfway through the third inning. Drew bought us all hot dogs and sodas, and both girls seemed content for another inning. Drew, in the meantime, proved to be an ardent, knowledgeable, and very noisy fan. He encouraged the players on both teams by name, applauded for all the good plays, but saved his really raucous cheers for the Phillies.
When he jumped to his feet to call his appreciation for a double play, Jenna whispered to Chloe, “He is so embarrassing.” Now I understood why the girl had made certain she was the first into our row of seats with Chloe following, then me, then Drew.
“Is it just baseball he’s so nuts about?” I asked. After all, a “fiancée” should know things like this about her man, right?
“Any sport, but especially baseball and football. He yells at the TV all during Eagles games. ‘You should have caught that, you idiot!’ ‘Throw the ball! Throw the ball!’ ‘Your running game is in the toilet!’ ‘I could have made a better play call! Ben could have made a better play call!’ That’s his real insult, calling up a man who lived before football was even invented.”
Drew leaned across me to eye Jenna. “Mocking your old man isn’t very nice. Remember, he holds the family purse.”
Jenna grinned at him. “Like I’m worried.”
He grinned back.
We made it to the fifth inning with the Phillies ahead by three before Chloe announced, “I have to go to the bathroom. Come on, Jenna.” She stood and held out a hand to me. “Can I have ten bucks?”
“It costs ten bucks to use the ladies room?” I reached for my purse. “Wow. Maybe you’d better wait until we get home.” I slapped a ten into her hand.
“Me too.” Jenna held out her hand to Drew, who filled it.
“Stay together,” I admonished as they clambered over me.
“And don’t talk to any strange people of the male persuasion,” Drew growled. “In fact, don’t talk to anybody.”
They paused at the end of the row just long enough to shoot us that my-parent-the-dork eye roll. Then they were off, giggling as they went.
Drew watched them go, missing a terrific catch by the right fielder, who jumped way up the wall and prevented a double, maybe even a triple.
“Sometimes being a single parent is absolutely terrifying.” He tore his eyes from the girls and turned back to the game.
I forgot the game as I looked at him. “It terrifies me every single day. Every moment.”
He nodded and gave a halfhearted clap for the runner stealing second. “I start to think maybe we’re doing okay, she and I. We’ll make it through to her adulthood after all. Then something happens and boom! I say she can’t go someplace or with some boy she likes and it’s like she becomes someone else.”
I smiled in sympathy. “Been there, lived that.”
“The worst is when Ruthie calls or, disaster of all disasters, shows up. That really sends Jenna into a tailspin. As if she wasn’t volatile enough being thirteen.”
“You’ve got Ruthie. I’ve got Eddie.”
I waited for him to tell me I had to tell Chloe about Eddie, but he surprised me.
“I wonder if it isn’t easier for Chloe, not knowing, than it is for Jenna with Ruthie. Being ignorant versus being ignored.”
“Yeah, Chloe and I were talking about that just the other night.” And about having a father and grandfather in jail, but I didn’t think now was the time to pass on that bit of information. I sighed. “I don’t want to tell her.”
He shot me a look. “‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead.’”
“I take it that piece of wisdom is from Ben?”
He grinned sheepishly. “It just pops out. Will he be around more?”
“Eddie? I hope not!” I was appalled at the very thought.
“Okay.” He seemed to relax, though why he’d be tense I didn’t know. “I thought maybe that was why she needed to know.”
I shook my head. “It’s that not knowing eats at her. When she was little, I could dodge the questions, but it’s becoming harder and harder. I’m afraid she’ll start resenting me and creating wonderful fantasies around him. Madge—that’s my best friend and business partner—keeps telling me I have to tell her.”
Drew waved at a vendor for a container of terrible ballpark popcorn. Somehow hot dogs tasted wonderful at a ball game, but the popcorn was just plain lousy, all soggy and flat. He offered me some, and I declined. He took a large handful and chewed with obvious enjoyment. “Can’t Chloe just check her birth certificate for her father’s name?”
“She’s threatened that. I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. When he left us without one scintilla of concern for our future, when he took up with my twin sister, I decided I would not name him. He didn’t deserve to be listed as her parent. I might have been scared to death about the future, but he wasn’t having any part of her. Ever.”
We fell silent as the organ blasted “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for the seventh-inning stretch. Then I turned to him. If we could talk about my embarrassing past, we could talk about his.
“What was Ruthie like when you first met her?” I knew she had to be different than she was now. Drew wouldn’t be attracted to the crass, wild woman I’d met earlier.
He grinned. “Curious
about me, huh?”
Yes, very, but I sure wasn’t going to say so. “Curious about Ruthie.”
He eyed me for a minute, then got that faraway look that means you’re seeing into the past. “She was very pretty in a wholesome, innocent way.”
Huh. Wholesome and innocent and Ruthie certainly didn’t go together now. But then I’d guessed she was different, so why was I surprised?
“I was a new Christian, and she seemed the epitome of all that the Christian life stood for. She was going to Bible school and came from this wonderful family. I loved her family. Still do.”
He fell silent and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t say any more, and I knew I couldn’t ask anything more, at least not now.
“I still don’t understand it all.” He had genuine pain in his eyes. “I know some of it’s my fault, but I know it’s not all my fault. I spent long hours in the library when I was in graduate school, and Ruthie resented being alone. I should have been smart enough to pick up on that, but it never occurred to me. My father traveled a lot on business, and my mother seemed to have no trouble being alone. And she could be alone for a week at a time. I at least came home every night, though it might be ten o’clock or midnight.”
“Not everyone can handle being alone.” I thought of my mother and Nan. “Didn’t she tell you how much it bothered her?”
“She finally did, and I invited her to spend the evenings in the library with me.” He gave a rueful smile. “I thought I was being husbandly, but I learned that not everyone likes spending hours in libraries.”
“And it’s one of your favorite things, right? It’s like that with me and estate sales and garage sales. I love them!”
He looked at me and shuddered. “People’s trash.”
“One man’s trash is another’s treasure.” I told him about the sunglasses.
“People are actually in a bidding war over sunglasses no one wears anymore?”
“Wonderful, isn’t it?”
He took a moment to boo when one of the home team struck out. Philadelphia fans are the world’s greatest booers and very proud of their reputation.
“Our living room rug at home is one I picked up in front of someone’s house on bulk trash day.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I had it cleaned, and it’s lovely.”
“At least a library—”
I don’t know what he planned to say, but I cut in with “—is full of old books. Used books. It’s one huge used-book warehouse.” I grinned at his nonplussed look, then steered the conversation back to Ruthie. “It seems to me that when Ruthie married a historian, surely she understood that libraries go with the territory, just like trash picking goes with me.”
“You’d think. But that wasn’t the real problem, just something she could articulate. Ruthie’s bipolar, and that was the major confounding issue.”
Uh-oh. Hard, hard issue coming up here, almost as hard on the families as it is on the one who suffers.
“When she was still under her parents’ roof, they were very good about making certain she took her meds, and as long as she did, she was fine. Also the illness hadn’t gripped her as it did in her twenties.
“I knew she had to take stuff every day, but I assumed that, like most people, she disciplined herself to take it. Her father warned me, but I didn’t understand the sufferer’s tendency to think it wasn’t needed, the penchant for stopping regardless of all the advice from doctors and counselors. I’d never been around someone who needed supervision like that.”
“You can’t make an adult take medicine if she decides not to. Her failure wasn’t your fault, Drew.”
He leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling. It was amazing how alone we seemed in the middle of thousands of screaming people.
“It was and it wasn’t,” he said. “Through the years I’ve stopped blaming myself for everything like I used to. I’ve learned that Jesus is the great Guilt Bearer, and I’ve given my marriage failures to Him. And I know that Ruthie must accept blame too—not that she does. She’s very intelligent. She knew she was vulnerable. She knew health was in that little bottle. She knew she shouldn’t listen to her compulsions but to her caregivers.”
“But it only takes a couple of days listening to your feelings and not taking your meds, and your mind is confused too.”
He nodded bleakly. “The daunting thing is that bipolar issues are permanent. It’s not like she’s going to be cured.”
“But bipolar people can learn to live productive lives.”
“They can, but it takes all the discipline of being a recovering alcoholic and then some.”
We were silent for several minutes during which he halfheartedly cheered. I watched his sad face and felt guilty.
“I’m sorry. I’ve ruined your game.”
He gave a sad smile. “Believe it or not, it’s good to talk about this, especially with Ruthie back at the house. Gives me perspective when I get confused.”
Lord, I could use some perspective on Eddie.
“When we were first married and she was feeling good, she’d wait up for me and make these absolutely wonderful dinners at midnight.” He obviously wanted me to understand. “I felt like the luckiest man alive. Then the depressions would hit, and she started drinking to deal with them, to dull the pain. I still struggle with why she would self-medicate with alcohol instead of her prescription. But that’s logic speaking, and for her, logic is the least of her considerations.”
I thought of how depressed I’d been when Dad and Pop went to jail and how logic had had nothing to do with my turning to Eddie for relief and comfort.
“Drew.” I leaned toward him. “If it’s going to be too distressing for you to have Ruthie at your place, she can stay with me tonight. Tori’s room’s available.”
He looked at me, and I was struck by how handsome he was with his strong jaw, dark brow, and wonderful brown eyes the color of Princess’s adored Kisses. Then there was his strength of character, accepting his responsibility for the demise of his marriage and for poor Ruthie even now, and I wished much too fiercely that I really were his fiancée.
Suddenly he smiled, a devastating smile that made my heart leap. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
He sat back and slid an arm across the back of my seat. “I can’t remember the last time anyone was concerned about me.”
I sat back and made believe that his arm was really around me.
Chloe studied her new best friend’s sad face. Jenna had done well through the ball game and all the way home. Chloe suspected it was because she didn’t want her dad to feel any worse than he already did. But now in the dark privacy of Chloe’s bedroom, her real heart poured out.
“It’s so embarrassing.” Jenna pushed at her pillow until she was comfortable. “And scary.”
And painful, Chloe thought, though Jenna didn’t say that. “I get embarrassing, but why scary? Do you think she’ll hurt you?”
“What if I turn out the same way?” There was a little sob in Jenna’s voice, a catch that swallowed some of her words. “What if I grow up to be like my mother?”
“Why would you?” No one would choose to be like that.
“It’s an illness. You can’t prevent all illnesses. And there’s no vaccine.”
“True, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get it either.”
“I sure have a better chance than you.”
Chloe shuddered at the idea that sweet Jenna could end up like Ruthie. “It’s genetic?”
Jenna nodded. “My dad doesn’t know it, but I’ve researched bipolar disorder online. If you’ve got a parent with the disease, you’ve got a twenty-five percent chance of getting it.”
Yikes. “But that means a seventy-five percent chance of not.”
Jenna gave a little smile. Chloe heard it when her friend spoke. “That’s true.”
Chloe thought for a moment. “It’s sort of like my mom being a glass-half-empty
kind of person if she’s not careful. Part of it’s because she was born that way. Part of it’s because of my grandmother. She’d make anyone turn half empty.”
“Your Aunt Tori doesn’t seem half empty.”
Chloe nodded. “Because she doesn’t have the born-that-way part, she doesn’t pay attention to Mom-Mom’s depressing take on life. She’s too selfish. If she doesn’t like something, she ignores it. Mom takes it to heart and blames herself.”
“She didn’t seem selfish when she bought you the computer.”
Chloe heard the slight reprimand, but it didn’t faze her. She knew what she was talking about. “Believe me, she’s got a reason for that too. I know she does. She has a reason for everything. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Maybe she’s trying to buy your love. I’ve got a friend whose father hardly ever sees her. He lives with his second family in Texas, and he always buys her lots of stuff when he does see her. He’s trying to buy her affection.”
Chloe thought about the laptop and the hair stuff. Jenna might be right. “What Aunt Tori doesn’t understand is that both Mom and I already love her just because she’s Aunt Tori.”
“That’s like my mom. She doesn’t understand that I want to love her just because she’s my mom. I know she’s sick and can’t help lots of what she does, but I still want to love her.” Jenna’s sigh was deep and hurt Chloe’s stomach. “She just won’t let me.”
When Tori left the SeaSide at 3 a.m., she was exhausted. These long holiday weekends were murder! And there was still tomorrow to get through. With any luck, it wouldn’t be a repeat of today. Well, it couldn’t be. Miles Denbigh was on his way home to the little lady who was in for the shock of her comfy, pampered life.
Miles loved gambling, and he’d been coming to the SeaSide for years. As the owner of a huge construction company with projects and housing developments in thirty of the fifty states, he had ample resources to gamble. He was one of her favorite customers—usually.
