From Here to Paternity

by Christine Rimmer

  She asked, “You aren’t going to just…call them?”

  “Eventually. If I can’t get through any other way. But first I like to get face-to-face, if I can. I learn a lot more that way. People have more defenses in place when it comes to the phone than they do when someone’s at their door.”

  She confessed, “I tried all the numbers from that phone bill again. Night before last.”

  “Any luck?”

  She went and got her notes and read them to him.

  He thanked her and then gently advised, “Better if you don’t call them again until I give you a go-ahead. If any of them do know something they’re hiding, your calling will only remind them to be on their guard.”

  “Of course. I won’t. I’m sorry, I—”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. Brand says you don’t want me interviewing your aunt, Irma Foxmire.”

  “That’s right. It’s…complicated.”

  “Hey. You’re the boss on this. Just let me know if you change your mind.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll contact you as soon as I have something to report. And you can reach me anytime at the cell number on my business card.” He said goodbye.

  Brand had left the sink and come to sit in the chair next to her. He brushed a steadying hand against her shoulder. “What? Bad news?”

  “Not really, no…” She repeated what Tanner had said, adding, “I don’t know. I just keep getting the feeling I’m never going to see my sister again. And the idea terrifies me, Brand. It makes me feel powerless and sad and just so hopelessly frustrated. I want her to be safe. I want her to be…happy. But I’m just so afraid for her, you know? I’m just so worried her little girl will have to grow up without her, that something might have happened to her, that she’s in some big trouble and there’s no one there to help her, that it might even be too late, she could even be—”

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey…” He rose, took her hand, pulled her up into his arms.

  She sniffed the tears away and buried her head against the hard warmth of his shoulder, and somewhere in the back of her mind, the old warning played as usual, in an endless loop.

  Watch out, you can’t trust him. You know you can’t. He left you once, he’ll do it again.

  Charlene shut her eyes tight and ignored those warnings. She hugged Brand harder, grateful for his strength and support right then, when she really needed it.

  He pressed his warm lips to the crown of her head. “Tanner will find her.” He sounded so sure.

  She clung to that, to his certainty. She reminded herself that it had only been nine days since the morning she found Mia on the sofa. Nine days wasn’t that long. Sissy could turn up again any day now—and she’d sounded downright cheerful in that note she’d left, cheerful and thoughtless and determined to do things her way, as usual.

  Not like someone in big trouble, not like a person who needed—or even wanted—help.

  She lifted her head from the comfort of his shoulder and beamed him a wide, brave smile. “Okay. I think I’ve pulled myself together now. You can finish peeling the potatoes.”

  “Damn. Just when I was going to carry you off to bed and comfort you…intimately.”

  She considered. Because, actually, being comforted intimately by Brand didn’t sound like a bad idea at all.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Mia’s napping, the roast isn’t done yet. And the potatoes really could wait a few more minutes. Let’s see…could you make it fast?”

  He pretended to take her question with great seriousness. “Comfort you. Intimately. And fast.”

  “Yes. That’s it. That’s what I want.”

  He laughed that deep laugh of his. And then he scooped her up against his chest and carried her to the bedroom.

  For a while she forgot all about her lost sister and her currently motherless baby niece, about the strange transformation of her evil aunt Irma, even about the fact that she had to watch herself with him, she had to be careful, not let herself count on him too much.

  Not get too attached.

  For a while she forgot everything but the stunning, amazing feel of his hands on her body, and the wonder of having him moving inside her, and those kisses of his that went on forever.

  For a while…

  Chapter Thirteen

  The week went by. Charlene’s constant worry about her sister aside, it was a good week. She and Brand were together constantly. He spent every night at her house, and she welcomed him there.

  What woman in her right mind wouldn’t? He was only too happy to help with the cooking and cleanup; he fed and diapered the baby without even having to be asked; he made Charlene laugh; and he seemed to enjoy being around both Mia and Aunt Irma.

  And then there was the fabulous lovemaking they shared. That just seemed to get better and better.

  Charlene really was taking it a day at a time and doing a pretty good job of it, with Brand’s help.

  Irma remained at the B&B. She’d have breakfast in the dining room there and then come on over to the diner for lunch. She and Chastity were becoming friends. Sometimes when Charlene dropped by to see her, she’d find her out on the front porch enjoying the spring weather, laughing with Brand’s mom.

  Charlene’s aunt showed no inclination to head back to San Diego. Thursday evening, when Chastity and Brand took the baby inside to give Charlene and Irma a few minutes alone, Charlene asked how Uncle Larry was getting along without her.

  Irma only waved a hand and said, “Oh, you know Larry. He’s always been perfectly capable of looking out for himself.”

  Charlene couldn’t argue with that one. If there was one thing Larry Foxmire made sure of, it was that Larry got what Larry wanted. He’d always been cold and distant around Charlene. Sissy used to say that he was the meanest man on the planet—and self-righteous in his meanness, the perfect husband for awful Aunt Irma.

  It was a mild evening, but it had grown a little chilly after darkness fell. Charlene drew her light sweater a little closer around her. “Aunt Irma?”

  “Umm?”

  “You really have changed, haven’t you?”

  “Oh.” Irma stared off down the walk, toward Chastity’s white picket fence and the steep sidewalk beyond it. “I hope so. I mean to. I mean to be…a whole new me.”

  “But, well, I’d really like to understand….”

  “Hmm?”

  “Why? What made you change?”

  Irma looked at Charlene then. Through the nightshadows, Charlene watched her smile. “Does it really matter what caused the change, as long as it’s happened?”

  Charlene thought about that one. “Yeah. I guess it does. It always helps to understand why the people you care about do what they do.”

  “Ah.” Irma spoke softly, with that new, amazing sweetness. “So you care about me now, do you?”

  Charlene nodded, a little surprised that Irma would ask such a question. “Well, yeah. I do. I’ve always cared about you—even when I wanted to strangle you. You’re my aunt. I may have wanted nothing to do with you, but I cared. I did. I always cared.”

  Irma reached across the distance between them and laid her hand briefly over Charlene’s. “I think you’re a little worried, that’s all—worried that I’m up to something, that I’m plotting against you. I think maybe you’re waiting for…the other shoe to drop, as they say. And I don’t blame you in the least for that, for mistrusting me and my motives. Not after the abuse you and Sissy have suffered at my hands in the past…”

  Charlene didn’t know what to say. It was, after all, so exactly what she had been worrying about.

  Irma chuckled. “Honey, I’m just not quite ready to talk about why yet. And I don’t expect you to believe in me, I know I can’t ask for that kind of blind trust. And I’m not asking for it. I’m only saying, the honest truth is, I really have changed. I have no idea what’s happened with Sissy, but I know it’s not good. I can see by the haunted look in your eye every time someone says her name, that w
herever she is now, you’re not comfortable with it. I’m, well, I’m worried sick for her—in spite of the terrible things I said to you when you called last week. Believe it or not, I was worried then, but I couldn’t let myself show it. I wasn’t ready to face how much I’m to blame for what’s happened with your sister.”

  Charlene spoke in a stunned whisper. “And now…you are ready?”

  “Oh, yes. I am. And there was a time when I would have gotten on my high horse and started trying to run everything. I would have been so sure that, wherever Sissy is, her little baby ought to be with me….”

  Charlene sat very still. She had no idea what to say, how to respond, as her aunt sat there so calmly on Chastity’s wicker settee and described in aching detail a good number of Charlene’s deepest, darkest fears.

  Irma was still talking. “Yes. It’s true. There was a time when, given this exact situation, I would have tried to get custody of Mia. I would have told myself she was better off with me. I would have called Social Services, had her taken away from you if you refused to give her up to me. I would have done anything—anything— to prove that I was right. And of course, all the while, what I’d really have been doing was ripping our family apart. Same as I did ten years ago.” Irma folded her hands in her lap and shook her head at them. “No. I think I want to go about this a different way this time. I think I want to be here, when Sissy finally does come home. I think I want to be…a support to you, Charlene. A help and not a hindrance. A true friend, not an enemy.”

  “Do you believe her?” Brand asked later that night, in bed, after she’d told him everything her aunt had said.

  “I want to…”

  “I think I hear a great, big but in there somewhere.”

  She cuddled in closer and put her hand on his warm, hard chest. “Well, yeah. I’m reserving judgment. But I do like what I’m seeing. And if she keeps on like this, well, the day is bound to come when I actually do trust her.”

  “Scary huh? Learning to trust…” His voice was gentle. Full of tolerance and understanding. She knew he was talking about more than Aunt Irma. He added wryly, “Especially when you’ve been screwed over before….”

  Tanner called at seven the next evening, Friday.

  He’d been to visit all the addresses he’d found for the numbers Charlene gave him. Randee Quail had no more to tell him than he’d already told Charlene. The three cell numbers in San Diego were also former schoolmates of Sissy’s. One of those, he caught up with at her parents’ house; one was at UC Irvine and the third had an apartment in Hollywood.

  All three claimed they hadn’t seen or heard from Sissy in a year.

  Charlene sighed. “But two of them told me they’d never heard of any Sissy.”

  “I mentioned that, once we got down to the truth, that they did know her. They all said Sissy had called them last year, after she left your place there in the mountains, and asked them to pretend not to know her if anybody called or came around with questions.”

  “But they ended up telling you that they knew her….”

  He gave a dry chuckle. “That’s part of what you’re paying me for, to get people to talk. Unfortunately, what they said when they finally did talk hasn’t been a whole lot of help in the main job of finding your sister—as of yet, anyway.”

  The guy with the no-longer-in-service number, Tanner said, was doing time at Folsom on a drug charge. He’d served eight months of a three-year sentence and claimed he hadn’t heard from Sissy since before he went in.

  “I pulled a few strings,” Tanner continued, as Charlene tried not to get depressed over the thought that her sister was calling drug dealers. “The guy’s had a visitor or two. Not Sissy, though. From what I could find out, he’s had no contact with her since she called him last year.”

  All that left was Dwayne and Zooey in San Francisco. Tanner said he’d caught Dwayne alone and gotten a few interesting bits of information. “Dwayne Tourville was your sister’s boyfriend in high school. His current girl, Zooey Nunley, never met her. Dwayne says he moved to the Bay Area two years ago, lives with Zooey in San Francisco now. He says that he’s talked to your sister on the phone a few times since he left Southern California.”

  “Has he seen her?”

  “Once. She dropped in on him back around the first of April. She had Mia with her and she was asking for money. He claims he gave her a hundred dollars and told her not to come around again. He seemed to think Zooey, who pays the rent, wouldn’t be too thrilled about meeting an old girlfriend and her newborn baby.”

  “So my sister was in San Francisco, with Mia, a few weeks before she dropped her off with me….”

  “Sorry, Charlene. I know it’s not much.”

  She made herself ask the question that had crept into her mind. “Do you think Dwayne might be Mia’s dad?”

  “I followed that line with him for a few minutes. He said no way and insisted again that, aside from her showing up at his door uninvited that one time a month ago, he hadn’t set eyes on Sissy since he left San Diego.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Can’t answer that. The guy seemed a little hinky—but he’s trying to keep Zooey from getting worried she’s got competition from some old girlfriend. He lied when you called him, right?”

  “That’s right. He told Zooey he didn’t know anybody named Sissy.”

  “So he freeloads off his girlfriend and he’ll lie to protect his interests. Does that mean he lied when he said he wasn’t Mia’s dad? At this point, there’s just no way to know.”

  “Any other news?” Charlene asked, trying to keep her hopes up.

  “That’s all for now, but I’ll keep on it.”

  “Can you fax me a report to the diner, with all the names and addresses and everything you found out?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Charlene thanked him and said goodbye.

  Brand had muted the TV when the phone rang. Now he took one look at her face and turned it off. “Judging by the way your shoulders are drooping, I’m guessing there’s a shortage of good news.”

  “We still have no clue where Sissy’s gone—except that she was in San Francisco, with Mia, a month ago.” She told him all that Tanner had told her.

  The next day, when she got Tanner’s report, Charlene ached to take off for the Bay Area—and then for San Diego. She wanted to pay a visit to Dwayne in San Francisco, see if she could learn more from him than Tanner had, even though she knew the odds of that were slim to none.

  Plus there was Mia to consider. She didn’t want to leave the baby, not even to go hunting her sister down—and dragging Mia all over the state just wasn’t any kind of option.

  So Charlene stayed put. She worked and she cared for her sister’s baby. She hung out with her aunt, who remained at the Sierra Star.

  And she and Brand grew closer. He stayed at her house most of the time. Her bathroom cabinet was half-full of his stuff, and he’d taken over a couple of drawers in her dresser and a third of her closet. Not that she minded his taking up her space.

  She didn’t. Not in the least. She thoroughly enjoyed having him around.

  Another week went by.

  Sometimes she’d watch Brand feeding Mia, or glance up to see him sitting across from her at her kitchen table of an evening, and she’d get to thinking how much the three of them were like a family.

  Sometimes it was hard to remember that she had to watch herself with Brand, that she couldn’t let herself count on him too much, that they were just playing it by ear after all.

  It was only a one-day-at-a-time kind of thing.

  Now and then she’d hold Mia and she’d catch herself on the verge of murmuring, “Your mommy loves you,” which wouldn’t have been a bad thing.

  Not in the least. If only she hadn’t been thinking at that moment of herself as Mia’s mommy.

  If only it didn’t get easier as the time went by, to forget about Sissy, to start feeling as if things would be the way they were now i
ndefinitely: Charlene and Brand and Mia, a makeshift family, a family that felt more real to Charlene as every day went by.

  Another week passed. And another after that. And two more….

  Aunt Irma made two trips to San Diego—brief trips, by plane. She was back both times within forty-eight hours. And she didn’t explain why she was going—or why she seemed to be more or less living at the Sierra Star.

  After the second trip, on Thursday night, the first of June, when Charlene sat with her aunt out on Chastity’s porch, she asked, “Is there something wrong between you and Uncle Larry?”

  “Oh, no.” Irma sipped the cup of tea she’d brought outside with her. “Nothing’s wrong in the least. In fact, for once, everything’s right.”

  “But you’ve been staying here in town for over a month now. Is Uncle Larry…okay with that?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Irma set her cup on the wicker side table. “The truth is, your uncle Larry and I have decided to go our separate ways.”

  Charlene had suspected as much. Still, it shocked her to hear her aunt say it so calmly. So…pleasantly. “Aunt Irma. Are you sure you’re…okay?”

  Irma chuckled. “Do you know how many times you’ve asked me that since I came to stay in the Flat?”

  “Several. And you always just say you’re fine.”

  “Because I am. I have never been better and that is the absolute truth.”

  “Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps, I think, to have someone to confide in.”

  “Not yet…”

  Charlene almost laughed. “That’s what you always say every time I ask you what is going on.”

  Irma’s expression was downright beatific. “I will tell you, honey. I promise. All of it. Every last gory detail. Eventually. Please. Don’t be angry. Be patient with me.”

  “Oh, Aunt Irma. I’m not angry. Honestly.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that.”

  Charlene nibbled on one of Chastity’s amazing lemon muffins. She sipped her own tea and then confessed, “You know, at first, I wanted to know what was up with you because I didn’t trust you. Now, well, I just worry that you’re keeping everything all bottled up inside.”