The Girl of His Dreams (Bachelor #1)

by Janet Nissenson

  “Did she ever work? Hold down a job?”

  “Never for very long. As I mentioned to Ines, she was a writer, had four books that were actually published. According to her publisher - a really wonderful man I met by chance a few years ago - Gillian would have received royalties for several years after the books were published. But that money would have dried up fairly quickly, plus she had no concept at all about spending habits or a budget. She’d buy silly, frivolous things, use up all her money, and then we’d have to wait in line at a food bank so we could get a bag of groceries. But when she was capable, she’d work menial jobs like a cashier or cleaning motel rooms, and would make just enough to rent a room for us somewhere. And then, of course, she was very good at skipping out when she owed someone money or it was time to pay the bills.”

  Aubrey frowned. “And how old were you while all of this was happening? When did you first become aware of how bad things were?”

  “Far too soon. Probably by the age of six or seven I realized that Gillian wasn’t - well, normal. Nothing like the mothers of my classmates or neighbors. By the time I was eight I was already tired of the constant picking up and moving from place to place every few months. And when I reached the age of ten I was more or less looking after Gillian, and doing everything I could to make sure no one tried to separate us. Because as hard as life was with her, the alternative was terrifying.”

  “I assume you mean foster care,” mused Aubrey. “And I understand why you would have been worried, given all the horror stories about kids being abused or neglected. But there are also a lot of really good foster homes out there. Maybe it would have been the best thing for you, Tessa.”

  “Maybe. But by then Gillian had become incredibly dependent on me. I was already more the parent than the child. And I knew if she didn’t have me that her condition would go from bad to worse very quickly. If they had taken me away from her, put me in a foster home, she wouldn’t have lived very long. And as maddening as she could be, she was still my mother. And still the only family I had, or knew about. It scared me, Aubrey, the thought of being all alone in the world. So I kept quiet, never said a word to anyone - teachers, classmates, neighbors, doctors - about how bad off Gillian was, how she kept spiraling downward a little faster each month. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from her. In spite of all her problems, I loved her very much.”

  Aubrey shook her head in frustration. “It’s not fair, you know? That I got so lucky, had such a great family and upbringing, while you got dealt such a lousy hand. Why couldn’t Gillian have realized how unfair she was being to you? I mean, she was lucid enough to realize she couldn’t take care of me properly. Why couldn’t she have been unselfish and given you the opportunity to have a better life, too?”

  “Because she needed me too much,” replied Tessa reflectively. “She needed to have me with her so that she’d have a reason to keep going. Otherwise, I think she would have given up sooner than later, committed suicide or developed a serious drug habit or something. And having an infant along would have drawn too much attention to her. She wouldn’t have been able to cope, and would have done something so irresponsible that both of her children would have been taken away from her. She gave you up because she didn’t really have a choice. But she kept me, put me through all that misery, because she needed a reason to go on living. And then as I got a little older, she needed me to take care of her.”

  Impulsively, Aubrey reached across the table to give her sister a hug. “I wish it had been different for you, easier, happier,” she murmured sadly. “I wish someone had noticed how bad it was for you and taken action. You mentioned to Ines that you and Gillian sometimes stayed in shelters. Wasn’t there someone in charge there who would have seen how bad off she was?”

  “Sometimes. We never stayed in those places more than a few days at a time, though. Gillian hated having to abide by rules, couldn’t stand the total lack of privacy you had in shelters. But you’re right. There were usually social workers or homeless activists trying to help out, and they would always be most concerned when there were children involved. But even when she was in a downward spiral, in one of her depressed states - which was usually why we’d wind up in a shelter to begin with - Gillian was aware enough, cagy enough, to know when to get out. There was one time..”

  Tessa stopped mid-sentence, closing her eyes and shuddering in recollection, and Aubrey could tell that it wasn’t a pleasant memory.

  Aubrey placed her hand over Tessa’s. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about this stuff if it freaks you out. I don’t want you to have nightmares or anything,” she added teasingly, trying to lighten up the somber mood.

  “Too late for that,” admitted Tessa. “Though I hardly ever have bad dreams these days. Ian’s protective even in his sleep. And, honestly, I don’t really mind talking about this stuff. God knows it’s probably therapeutic for me. What I started to say a minute ago was there was one time in the shelter when Gillian was fast asleep, almost in a stupor because it was all but impossible to wake her up when she got real bad. I was probably around twelve at the time, had already started - well, developing. And once I hit puberty I always looked a little older than I really was. Anyway, to make a long story short, I had just managed to fall asleep - something that wasn’t easy for me in those kind of places - when this crazy, creepy man tried to - well, tried to molest me, I guess. Fortunately I woke up before he could do much more than put his hands on me, and I screamed so loud the shelter manager came running right over. I was okay, just shook up, and of course Gillian slept through the whole thing. But the shelter manager had to report the incident to the police, and when they came to take a report and ask me a few questions, I knew right away what they must be thinking - that a girl my age had no business living in a place like that, especially with a mother who was too out of it to look after her. And I knew, just knew, that they would call Child Protective Services. So I woke Gillian up, told her what had happened, and that was enough to snap her out of her funk long enough to sneak both of us out of there.”

  Tessa reached blindly for her mug of tea, wrapping her hands around it as if for comfort or warmth, even though it was approaching a hundred and ten degrees outside. Aubrey gave her a few minutes to regain her composure, then continued to listen intently as she resumed her story.

  “After that, we did whatever we could to avoid staying in shelters. When Gillian was manic, she was very adept at charming her way into peoples lives, especially men and elderly widows. With the little old ladies, she’d talk her way into staying in a guest house or in-law unit on their property, offering to do housecleaning or yardwork in exchange for rent. With the men, she usually got a lot more, sometimes even an apartment of our own, and one of them gave her a used car he’d fixed up for her. And then when things went south - as they always did eventually - at least we had the car to sleep in instead of having to stay in shelters. By the time I was fifteen, I was able to get a couple of part-time jobs after school and on weekends, and with Section Eight vouchers we managed to rent a studio apartment in Tucson. But by then, Gillian was in a really bad place, too far gone to help herself. And I lost her before I was in a position to be of real help.”

  Tessa took a sip of her tea, then set the mug down, pushing it away from her as she wrapped her arms around herself. She looked like she was a million miles away, thought Aubrey somberly, as though she was so deeply entrenched in her memories that the rest of the world had faded away.

  Aubrey felt helpless, totally unsure of what to say or how to comfort Tessa after listening to all of the awful things that had happened to her. And she knew without having to ask that what she’d just learned was merely the tip of the iceberg.

  “Hey, that’s enough for today, okay?” she urged Tessa. “No more talk about the bad times. Like you said, that was all a long time ago, and you’ve got the most wonderful life now. Plus,” she added cheerily, “you’ve also got me. We should b
e celebrating right now, not thinking about sad stuff.”

  Tessa gave her a wobbly smile. “You’re right. No more doom and gloom, I promise. Though you need to promise me something, Aubrey.”

  Aubrey nodded. “Of course. What is it?”

  “You can’t tell Ian anything I just told you - about the shelter or living in a car or any of it. Please promise me that this conversation will remain just between us. Please?”

  “You know it will,” assured Aubrey. “But I can’t believe Ian doesn’t already know this.”

  “He does, yes. Most of it anyway. But it drives him a little mad anytime the subject comes up. He gets terribly upset, sometimes for days at time, and it takes a lot of effort to calm him down. He - well, Ian being Ian - Mister Control Freak, as I call him sometimes - hearing about my past makes him feel helpless. And that’s not a feeling he’s used to having. He feels guilty somehow that I went through all that, that he wasn’t around to make it all go away, even though I was a child or a teenager at the time and hadn’t even met him yet. And even now he still goes out of his way to try and make it all up to me somehow, though of course he already has in so many ways. So just don’t bring the subject up around him, please?”

  “Not a word,” agreed Aubrey. “Though I’ll admit to knowing how he must feel, at least a little. I feel guilty now, too, when I realize how hard you had it, while I on the other hand had it so easy.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Tessa insisted. “Tell me something. How old were you when your parents first encouraged you to find out about your past? To learn more about your birth parents?”

  “Hmm. Probably when I was around ten or eleven. I mean, I always knew I was adopted, they were honest about that right from the beginning. But they waited until I was a little older before making that offer.”

  “Ten or eleven,” mused Tessa. “I would have already been fifteen, sixteen by then. So even if you’d followed your parents advice and learned you had a sister, it wouldn’t have made much difference by that point for me. So stop feeling guilty, because there was nothing you could have realistically done.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But I won’t bring it up again, since I can tell it upsets you.” Aubrey glanced at the clock on the wall. “Guess we should pay the bill and get on the road. But I did have one more thing I wanted to ask you first. Do you - do you have a picture of her? Gillian, I mean. Our - our mother.”

  Tessa smiled, and retrieved her phone from her leather satchel. “Up until a few years ago, I would have had to tell you no. Any photos we had - which weren’t very many - got destroyed in the apartment fire. But when I met her publisher - a wonderful man named Glen Rockwell - not only did he have a copy of one of her books that I’d been searching for but several photos of both me and Gillian. They aren’t very good quality, I’m afraid, but this is probably the best of the lot.”

  Aubrey took the phone from her, staring in wonder at the smiling, almost mischievous face on the screen. Gillian - her mother - looked like she must have been in her very early twenties in the photo, and she was so beautiful she took Aubrey’s breath away. But her beauty, as Tessa had said earlier, was of the fragile, almost angelic type, and Aubrey could definitely understand why so many people had felt compelled to help her over the years. And as beautiful as Gillian had been, she also looked lost and sad, and Aubrey wondered how young she’d been when the bipolar disorder had first manifested.

  As though Tessa could read her thoughts, she spoke softly as Aubrey continued to gaze upon their mother’s image. “She would have been around twenty-two, twenty-three in this picture, I think. A little younger than you are now. And if her books - which are semi-autobiographical and I’ll give you to read if you’re interested - are accurate, she would have already begun to show symptoms of her illness a few years before that. Her mother - our grandmother - also suffered from mental illness, something Ian and I discovered a few years ago. It - it can be hereditary, you know.”

  Aubrey looked up in shock. “I - I never considered that. Oh, God, does this mean that you and I are going to - to end up like they did?”

  “No. No.” Tessa shook her head firmly. “That was my initial reaction, too, after learning about our grandmother. Especially since I’d dealt with some depression over the years myself. But Ian and I met with a specialist, who did an evaluation and then had me take several different genetic tests, and she determined I wasn’t at risk. You could do the same, just to put your mind at ease, but I think you would have shown signs of the illness long before now. And you seem like the happiest, most well adjusted person I’ve ever met, so I’d say the possibility was almost nonexistent.”

  Aubrey exhaled in relief. “Good. But I might look into having those tests done one of these days, just to make sure. Now, we really should hit the road. You need to get back to your husband and kids, while my parents’ flight should be landing in about an hour. And after everything you and I have been through today, I really, really need to hug them both.”

  Tessa placed several bills on the guest receipt tray, having insisted on paying for lunch since Aubrey had offered to drive. As she stood, Aubrey placed a hand on her arm to get her attention, then smiled as she opened her arms wide.

  “But first,” she murmured, “I especially need a hug from my sister.”

  And with mingled tears and laughter, they shared a warm, comforting, and very sisterly embrace.

  ***

  “Would you like to see Auntie Aubrey’s room? The one she slept in from the time she was Liam’s age?” Aubrey winked at her adorable little niece. “I might even have a few of my old dolls and stuffed animals laying around. Though none of them are as cute as your lamb.”

  Gilly immediately placed her tiny hand in Aubrey’s, nodding enthusiastically. “See dollies wif Auntie Aubrey!” she declared. “Can Lambie come, too?”

  Considering that the little girl had something of a stranglehold on the woolly stuffed lamb that seemed to go everywhere with her, Aubrey didn’t think she’d even consider the possibility of leaving her beloved toy behind.

  “Of course Lambie can come along,” crooned Aubrey. She caught Tessa’s eye and winked. “Your Mummy can come, too, if she’d like.”

  Imploringly, Gilly held out her other hand to her mother. “Mummy, you come, too! Pease?”

  Tessa glanced over at the Baby Bjorn travel crib where Liam slumbered peacefully, then to where Ian was deep in conversation with Kurt Larson and Aubrey’s oldest brother Josiah. Lorena was in the kitchen finishing up dinner preparations, having refused any and all offers of help.

  “Okay. Mummy will come, too,” she agreed, taking Gilly’s hand.

  Aubrey had already given them an abbreviated tour of the sprawling ranch style house she’d grown up in. And while it was much smaller and far less formal than the elegant Georgian mansion in San Francisco where she now made her home with Ian and their children, the Larson home seemed like a palace to Tessa when she compared it to some of the rundown, shabby little rooms and apartments she and her mother had lived in over the years. A palace, she thought somewhat bitterly, that she, too, could have grown up in had Gillian not been so self-absorbed, thinking only of her own needs and rarely if ever of her daughter’s.

  But, no, thought Tessa firmly. She was quite finished with feeling sorry for herself, having done plenty of that over the past thirty six hours or so. This evening was intended to be a fun, relaxing one, a time to meet Aubrey’s parents and brother, and to spend a few more precious hours with her newfound sister before she, Ian, and the children had to return to San Francisco in the morning. It was nowhere near enough time, realized Tessa mournfully, given that she and Aubrey had barely begun to get to know each other or form a relationship. An idea had started to form in her head this morning over breakfast, as she and Ian had discussed the matter, and she was hoping Aubrey would be receptive to her suggestion.

  It had been Lorena’s idea to throw this impromptu dinner, even though she
and Kurt had just returned from a long vacation yesterday. She’d insisted it would be a simple meal, no trouble at all, and that she and her husband were very anxious to meet Tessa and her family. Aubrey, too, had pleaded with Tessa to agree, and she hadn’t been able to resist.

  Lorena and Kurt had been visibly startled to see just how closely Tessa resembled their daughter, and then again at how much Gilly looked like her mother and aunt. But they hadn’t hesitated for even a second to welcome Tessa and her family into their home, giving her a fierce hug as though they’d known her forever. There had been tears in Lorena’s dark eyes as she’d touched Tessa’s cheek softly, murmuring, “I wish things had been different. I wish you could have been mine, too. But this isn’t a night for tears or regrets. It’s a night for family, and you and your husband and your babies are a part of our family now, Tessa.”

  While Kurt had bustled about getting everyone a drink, Lorena had fetched the photo that Aubrey had mentioned during lunch two days ago, the one where she looked so much like Gilly. There were photos everywhere, in fact, Tessa had realized - hanging on the walls, sitting on top of tables, and in the scrapbooks that filled an entire bookcase. Photos that chronicled the happy family life that Aubrey and her brothers had always enjoyed, that traced their lives from childhood through their school years into their teens and beyond. Resting on top of the grand piano that was Kurt’s pride and joy was a hinged frame that held three separate photos, one of each of the Larson children at their college graduation.

  And even upstairs, as they walked down the hallway towards Aubrey’s room, Tessa noticed dozens more framed photographs gracing the walls - photos of family vacations and holidays and birthday parties, of all of the events and special occasions that she’d been cheated out of because Gillian hadn’t believed in celebrating birthdays, and because the holidays had made her sad and melancholy for the most part. And God knew there had never been money for things like birthday parties or Christmas presents or vacations, given that they’d been lucky to have enough to keep themselves clothed and fed most of the time.