Finding Happily-Ever-After

by Marie Ferrarella

  “When they divorced, Rita burned all his pictures. Said it was part of the healing process.” She’d always been a great one for burning pictures once someone was out of her life. Chris imagined that she’d burned the few she had of him when she’d banished him from her life, too.

  Jewel surprised him by nodding. “I’ve heard of that,” she said.

  Chris laughed shortly, recalling the incident. Rita had already been heavily into drugs and alcohol. And their relationship was on a downward spiral because he tried to get her to stop.

  “Rita almost burned the house down,” he told her. “Fire department had to come to put out the fire.” He knew that for a fact because her homeowner’s insurance wouldn’t pay to repair the damages, so he covered the expenses out of his own pocket. “Luckily, they caught it in time so it wasn’t a complete disaster.”

  Right now, there was only one thing that Jewel was interested in. “So then there are no photographs left at all?”

  “Yeah, actually there is,” he said wearily. She looked at him, waiting. “I have one.”

  “You?” She wouldn’t have thought, given how he felt about the man, that he would have a photograph of him.

  Chris nodded. “It’s a wedding picture,” he explained. “She gave it to me and I never got around to tossing it. Rita was in it,” he added unnecessarily.

  She knew that was the reason he’d kept it. Not because he was sentimental but, quite possibly, it might have been the only photograph of his sister he had in his possession.

  “Good thing,” Jewel said. “I’ll need it as soon as possible.”

  “No problem,” he told her. “I don’t live that far from here.”

  She glanced over to where Joel was sitting. Now that he’d gotten the hang of it, the boy seemed to be completely engrossed in the video game he was playing. She didn’t want him to be disturbed so soon.

  “Why don’t we get a few more of the questions out of the way before you go retrieve that photograph?” she suggested. Not waiting for Chris to answer, she went on to the next question. “Do you know if Ray ever served in the army or if he was employed anywhere that might have kept his prints on file before he married your sister?”

  “He was never in the army,” Chris told her, “but he was arrested, so his prints have to be on file with the police department.”

  This man was sounding more and more like a winner. No wonder Culhane’s sister had divorced him. She wasn’t feeling all that good about looking for Ray, but she supposed, as the boy’s father, he had a right to know that Joel’s mother had died. And there was always the infinitesimal chance that the man had changed.

  “What was the charge?”

  “Drunk and disorderly,” Chris recited. That had been the beginning of the end of his sister’s marriage, he recalled. “Rita called me in the middle of the night and begged me to bail him out.”

  She could tell that wasn’t his automatic reaction to the situation. “And did you?”

  He snorted. In his opinion, jail was too good for Ray. “If it was up to me, I would have had them throw away the key.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she pointed out. Jewel studied him for a moment and had her answer. He had a soft spot in his heart for his sister. This had to be killing him. “You bailed him out, didn’t you?”

  Chris shrugged, frustrated. “She was crying. I was afraid she was going to start drinking again. She was pregnant,” he explained.

  Pausing, Jewel jotted down a few more notes for herself, then looked up at him. “You sure you want me to find this guy?”

  He nodded. “I’m sure. If you don’t find him, social services is going to take Joel.”

  Had she missed something? “Maybe I’m being dense here,” she said slowly, “but aren’t you Joel’s uncle?”

  Chris knew where she was going with this and it made him uncomfortable to discuss it. “Yes, but I can’t raise him.”

  It was making less sense, not more. “Again, maybe I’m being dense here, but—”

  He cut her off. “I don’t know the first thing about raising a kid.”

  “Most first-time parents don’t,” she countered. “Kids don’t come with instruction manuals. I’m told that you’re supposed to learn as you go along.”

  Maybe, but there were more problems than just that. The idea of being responsible for the care and feeding of another human being, for his very welfare, made him uncomfortable. He wasn’t prepared for something like that, didn’t feel up to it. Look how he’d dropped the ball with Rita.

  For the first time since his parents had died, he was glad that they weren’t around so they wouldn’t have to see this.

  “I’m never home,” he told the woman with the luminous eyes who was apparently waiting for more. “With all my work at the university, home is just some place I sleep. Occasionally.”

  She took all this in quietly, trying not to be judgmental. “If you don’t mind my asking, exactly what is it that you do for a living?”

  “I teach physics at the University of Bedford.”

  “A noble profession,” she commented with a nod. “And that’s it?”

  “I’m also collaborating with some other professors on a revised physics textbook, and I just had a paper published in a professional journal.”

  She waited and when he said nothing more, she pointed out, “Physics professors have children.”

  His eyes went flat. He wasn’t hiring her because he wanted to be challenged. “Physics professors usually have wives first.”

  He sounded irritated, she thought. She’d overstepped. Again.

  Jewel held up her hands as if she were pushing back a blanket because the room had suddenly become too warm. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound as if I were trying to talk you into something. It’s just that, from the sound of it, Joel’s father isn’t exactly going to be up for father of the year, especially if he hasn’t come around to see his son since he walked out—”

  “He hasn’t,” Chris assured her.

  “And you know this for a fact how?”

  He glanced toward the living room. He genuinely felt sorry for the boy, but his situation was what it was. He couldn’t take Joel in for more than a few days. Maybe a week. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them, especially not to his nephew.

  “Joel told me.”

  She looked over toward the boy and caught herself wondering what Joel thought about all this and how he’d react to being reunited with the father who had apparently wanted no part of him.

  For the time being, she kept the rest of her thoughts to herself.

  But her heart went out to the boy.

  Chapter Four

  Ray Johnson’s features were etched into Jewel’s mind as she quietly surveyed the surrounding area in the cemetery, searching for Rita Johnson’s errant ex-husband.

  It was a sunny Southern California day, but it was atypically muggy. Humidity was rarely a factor in the weather, but every once in a while, it made an appearance just to remind the transplants why they had all migrated here.

  There were several other services going on at the same time at the cemetery. Jewel covertly scanned the mourners at each gravesite to see if Ray was there, hanging back so as not to be noticed, watching the woman he had supposedly once loved being buried.

  She bit back a frustrated sigh. As far as she could determine, Ray Johnson wasn’t anywhere within the vicinity. That wasn’t to say that he still might not come.

  If he’d read the obituary.

  Some people devoured the obituary page, happy to have cheated the Grim Reaper for another day. Others felt it was bad luck to even glance through the obits. Still others were oblivious to its existence.

  She supposed it had been a long shot.

  Because Chris had been convinced—and rightly so—that Rita’s death wouldn’t suddenly bring out friends from years gone by who had lost touch with her, and because his sister and the religion she’d been brought up in had had a falling out a lo
ng time ago, he saw no reason to go through the charade of a church service. Instead, he asked one of the priests at St. John the Baptist Church to say a few words over Rita’s casket before it was lowered into its final resting place. He did it more for Joel than for Rita.

  And maybe, Chris allowed, he’d done it a little for himself, as well.

  So now, two days after he’d initially hired her, Jewel, Culhane and his nephew were standing at Rita Johnson’s gravesite, listening to Father William Gannon offering up prayers and speaking with professional compassion about someone he had never met.

  At least, Jewel thought, it had begun with the three of them and the priest. She’d stopped at the deceased woman’s house and offered to take both Culhane and his nephew to the cemetery. Culhane had started to demur, saying he was going to drive, but Joel seemed to brighten up a little when he saw her. After a moment of silence, Culhane had thanked her and accepted her offer for a ride to the cemetery.

  The priest was just beginning when Jewel saw a woman in black coming up the slight incline, moving quickly despite the fact that her heels were sinking into the grass with each step she took. Leading the way, the woman was followed by two other women, also dressed in black.

  The very picture of compassion, Cecilia Parnell came straight to their tight little threesome, her gaze unwaveringly focused on the little boy who stood between his uncle and Jewel.

  For one moment, Jewel was almost speechless. She’d thought after all this time that her mother had run out of ways to surprise her.

  Obviously, she’d been wrong. “Mother, what are you doing here?” Jewel finally asked.

  There was no hesitation on Cecilia’s part as she smiled warmly, first at her former client and then at his nephew.

  “I’m being supportive of Chris and Joel,” Cecilia answered simply. “Worst thing I can possibly imagine is having a loved one die and then adding to that hurt by having no one attend her funeral service,” her mother explained.

  Jewel supposed she bought that. Sort of. “And Maizie and Theresa?” she asked, nodding at the two women who were just joining them. Theresa looked a little winded.

  “They think the same way I do,” Cecilia assured her daughter. Turning toward Chris, Cecilia made the introductions before Jewel could. “Chris, Joel,” she smiled again at the boy, “these are my very dear best friends, Maizie Sommers and Theresa Manetti.”

  “Otherwise known as the Greek Chorus,” Jewel murmured under her breath. The affectionately voiced remark still earned her a sharp look from her mother.

  Each woman shook hands with Chris and expressed her sorrow at his loss. They both included the boy as well, treating him with the same sort of compassion they would have shown to another grieving adult.

  Father Gannon cleared his throat. When they looked in his direction, he said, “If I may continue.”

  “Of course, Father. Forgive the interruption,” Theresa apologized for all of them, stepping back beside Maizie.

  Rather than stand by her daughter, Cecilia chose to stand on the other side of Chris, the latter and Jewel flanking Joel.

  “Anyone else coming?” Father Gannon asked.

  Chris raised a quizzical eyebrow in her direction. When she shook her head, he said, “No, no one else.”

  “All right then,” Father Gannon said, and resumed the service.

  It was over almost immediately, even though Father Gannon added several more prayers for Rita’s soul.

  Scanning the outlying area one last time, Jewel glanced down at the boy at her side. It seemed to her that Joel remained amazingly dry-eyed. He hadn’t brushed away or shed a single tear from the moment the service began. By contrast, she noticed that her mother sniffled a couple of times into her handkerchief and Theresa was struggling to keep from sobbing. As was Maizie.

  All of them, Jewel felt certain, were remembering other, far more personal funerals. Each woman had buried a husband years before she thought she would ever have to. Funerals brought that kind of haunting emptiness back. It was to each woman’s credit that she had come out to give a small boy comfort.

  Even Culhane, who appeared to have steeled himself against what was going on, had eyes that shone with tears he just barely managed to keep from falling.

  Only the boy remained stoic throughout the entire brief ceremony. It was almost eerie, Jewel thought. She was tempted to ask Joel why he wasn’t crying, but she refrained.

  The service completed, Father Gannon, a large hulk of a man, shyly made his apologies. “I would stay longer, but there is a baptism I must get to.”

  Chris nodded his head. “A far happier occasion,” he agreed as he slipped the priest an envelope with a check for his trouble.

  Pocketing the envelope, Father Gannon hesitated a moment longer. He looked from the man to the boy. “If either of you find that you need to talk…” Handing Chris a small card with both his cell number and the church’s phone number on it, Father Gannon allowed his voice to trail off.

  Chris dutifully pocketed the card without looking at it. It could have been the business card for a local arcade for all he knew.

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Chris assured him.

  Cecilia backed up his statement by saying, “He and Joel won’t be alone, Father.”

  Jewel gave her a dark look, praying that Culhane took that as an offer on her mother’s part to serve as a compassionate ear. She, on the other hand, knew exactly what her mother meant. She was offering Jewel’s services. The matchmaker in her mother never died, never rested. Instead, it had gone into overdrive now that Nikki and Kate had “found their soul mates.”

  As if such a thing really existed.

  She’d tailed enough cheating spouses to know that the opposite was far more likely to be true. More than 50 percent of all marriages were doomed from the start. She sincerely prayed that Nikki and Kate would be luckier than most people in their choices.

  Father Gannon took his leave and Jewel made a final sweep of the immediate area. The man she was looking for was still nowhere in sight. Either from lack of knowledge, or for some other, more complex reason, Ray Johnson hadn’t shown up to pay his last respects to the mother of his son.

  Placing his hand on Joel’s shoulder to guide the boy out of the cemetery, Chris turned to the trio of older women. “Ladies, I’d like to thank you for coming here today—” He got no further.

  “Oh, but we’re not leaving you and Joel just yet,” Cecilia informed him. There was just the appropriate touch of cheerfulness in her voice. Not so much that it detracted from the solemn occasion, but just enough to indicate that things did have a way of getting better.

  “I brought food,” Theresa volunteered. “We can set it up once we get to your house.”

  Chris had no idea what to make of these women, two of whom had been complete strangers before today. There was no reason for them, or for the woman whose cleaning company had worked a miracle on Rita’s house, to put themselves out like this. He was nothing to them and neither were Joel or Rita. He liked things that made sense and this didn’t.

  But there was no denying that, along with the confusion, their actions did generate a measure of warmth within him.

  Still, he felt he had to protest, even though he sensed that it was futile. “You really didn’t have to go out of your way like this.”

  Jewel felt obligated to intercede. She’d grown up regarding her mother’s two best friends as her aunts and, in a great many ways, they were closer than real family. She also knew the way their minds worked—all of their minds. It was only after she, Nikki and Kate had graduated from high school that she came to realize that these kindly faces hid three very devious minds. Each woman was bound and determined to see her daughter and her friends’ daughters blissfully wedded with 2.5 children and a white picket fence—and the sooner the better.

  Since Nikki and Kate were now, according to the old-fashioned phrase, “spoken for,” Jewel was the only holdout, if she didn’t count Theresa’s
son, Kate’s brother. She had secretly hoped that they would focus on Kullen because he was older than she was, but apparently age in male years was not the same as age in female years. Consequently, she had become the target of choice.

  Well, not today, Jewel thought stubbornly. And not here.

  “It’s what she does,” she told Chris. “Theresa runs a catering service. And Maizie,” she added, nodding toward the most animated of the threesome, “is a Realtor. If you decide, down the line,” she added expressly for Joel’s sake, “to sell either your house or your sister’s, she’d be the one to see. She’s very good at what she does.” Her eyes swept over the three women. “They all are.”

  “We didn’t come to talk business,” Cecilia quickly interjected, as if to blot out the effect of her daughter’s words. She looked pointedly at Chris. “We came to help any way we can.”

  Jewel knew that she meant it. “No use fighting it,” she advised her client. “Just let them feed you and fuss over you and Joel a little. Otherwise, they’ll stay here until you do. They’re very stubborn that way. Trust me, I know.”

  “Sounds like good advice to me.” The edges of his mouth curved ever so slightly.

  He did appreciate what Cecilia and the other women were trying to do. And if they came over to the house, that meant that he wouldn’t have to be alone with the boy. It had been four days since he’d been summoned to the hospital by the police, four days in which he’d been with the boy and he still had no idea what to say, what to do with Joel or how to behave around him. Women were better at this sort of thing, he thought. Even the private investigator he’d hired was better at forming a connection with his nephew than he was.

  Added to that, he had to admit that the lack of any sort of display of grief on the boy’s part did disturb him.

  “Why don’t you ride in my car with me and the other ladies?” Cecilia suggested, looking down at Joel. “I’m not sure I remember exactly where your house is. I need someone to give me directions. Can you do that for me, Joel?”

  Joel took his cue like a pro and nodded his head. “Okay.”