The Third Daughter's Wish

Which meant yes. She’d located her father.

“How? Through an Internet search?”

“Yep. It took some doing, but I found him, and he’s not that far away,” she said, sounding pleased with herself.

Damn.

“When are you going?” Gabe asked. “You said he’s nearby. I’ll go with you.”

She sighed as she leaned backward to fish her truck key from a front pocket. “You think my old man’s going to attack me?”

He rolled his eyes. “No, but you might appreciate having someone to talk to about it all. I could offer another perspective. Play that big-brother role.”

She put the key in the slot, then met his gaze. “You’re intense about this, Gabe. Why?”

If he told her his suspicions, he’d risk revealing secrets she might never learn for herself. Secrets best left hidden.

“You take on too much alone sometimes.” He softened his voice to lessen the blow of his next words. “Shades of your mother.”

“Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. And you’re not really my brother. Goodbye.” She started her truck.

“Call me when you’re going, Josie,” he said over the engine noise.

She shook her head, her expression incredulous, then closed the truck door between them. She zipped out of Mary’s lot and onto the street. She’d be home in two minutes.

On his sensibly slower way home, Gabe vowed to keep a close eye on Josie. They were not only friends, they were also business colleagues currently working on separate contracts within the same housing development.

He knew what she was doing a lot of the time.

Perhaps he could show up unexpectedly at her place on a regular basis and make sure she didn’t meet her father on her own.

If she did it at all.

Chapter Two

Josie’s truck tires spun up a cloud of dust as she traveled a lonely road in the middle of Kansas. When she approached a rise thick with spindly red cedars and yellowing cottonwoods, she spotted a mailbox tilted hopefully out toward the road. Slowing quickly, she read the boxy black numbers adhered to its side. “Nine fifty-four,” she murmured, then glanced into her passenger seat to check her printout. The numbers matched. This had to be the house.

After turning into the drive, she weaved the truck through a succession of dry potholes, then parked behind a dingy white van and yanked her keys from the ignition.

Abruptly, the bold curiosity that had kept her foot heavy on the pedal from her house to this one failed. She opened the bottled soda she’d bought at a highway service station, tipped it high against her lips and winced as the soda went down. It was too warm to quench thirst. Too sugary to satisfy. Josie craved the bitter snap of a cold beer. Just one, for courage.

But she was driving and it was early—she’d had to sneak out at the crack of dawn to avoid Gabe, who’d been wanting to hang out more than usual lately. Besides, she never drank alone, thanks to a nagging worry that her taste for brew meant she was on her way to alcoholism. Like her father.

Josie had her mom to thank for most of that worry. But Ella Blume wasn’t around anymore, to check Josie’s refrigerator for beer bottles or her life for stray men. Despite Ella’s clean, simple living, she’d died of ovarian cancer when she was barely into her fifties.

Her mother hadn’t been wrong about everything, of course, but she hadn’t been right about a lot. All men were not worthless. The outside world was not an evil place. Josie hoped her mother had been wrong about her father, too.

How could a man be completely uninterested in his own children? Would the knowledge that he had grandchildren draw him closer to the family? Would he be concerned about Lilly’s well-being?

Josie had a thousand questions. He’d answer some of them, she was certain. After recapping the soft-drink bottle, Josie set it in her cup holder and eyed the shabby two-story a dozen yards ahead.

For some reason, she’d always envisioned her father in a sprawling ranch. This smallish house had the flat, no-nonsense lines of the Prairie-style architecture prevalent in the Midwest over a century ago.

If someone spent a little time out here with a paintbrush and hammer, the structure could be gorgeous. The patchwork yard of cracking mud and weedy, dormant grass could also use some TLC. Josie’s theory about her father’s destination after his departure was also wrecked. Apparently, he hadn’t fled small-town life to seek fortune in some distant metropolis. Woodbine was little more than a scattering of homes. Tiny even when compared with Augusta’s population of eight-thousand.

Josie wondered if her father had left Kansas and returned, or if he’d always been here—just ninety miles north of home on highway seventy-seven. Close enough to pop by once or twice in twenty-seven years to say, “Hi, I’m your dad. How are you?”

As soon as she stepped down from her truck, the sound of barking dogs caught her attention. Stuffing her key into her jeans pocket, she swiveled to peruse the end of the drive. Five or six big dogs stood enclosed in a row of chain-link pens beneath the cedars. They must have been hidden from the road.

She hadn’t pictured her dad as a dog owner. Her mother hadn’t allowed pets.

Perhaps the man had always wanted a dog. Maybe it was one of several things that had caused such a furious schism between husband and wife. Josie didn’t know. Callie was the only one who remembered their father, but her memories were sketchy. A trip to a carnival, where their father had lifted her onto a white carousel horse. Coins emptied from his pockets and scattered on the back porch step while he taught her to count the pennies.

A man who cared for dogs now would be curious about that little girl he’d loved then, wouldn’t he? He’d wonder about all three of his little girls. Even the one he’d never seen.

The pain in that thought struck. Josie couldn’t decide if she was here for Lilly’s sake or her own. She hesitated, motionless for a moment while she tried to decide whether to approach the house or forget it.

A breeze soothed her neck and hands, diverting her attention long enough to calm her fears. After removing her sweater, she folded it over her arm.

The worst that could happen was that her father would be the drunken fool that Ella had described. If he was, Josie would ask about any seizure disorders and go away. She hadn’t driven all this way to chicken out. Not without resolving a single question.

“Here goes nothing,” she muttered, and strode up the drive.

The square, concrete porch was inviting enough. Clay pots of orange chrysanthemums flanked the metal storm door, and the wooden angel plaque hanging next to it proclaimed visitors welcome in gold stenciled lettering.

Before Josie had located the doorbell, a movement in the front window caught her eye. She paused with her hand outstretched and resisted another urge to run. She had probably been seen by now, anyway.

She pressed the button, then dropped her hand and waited for someone to greet her. A single bark sounded, louder and closer than the others, but the door remained closed.

Could someone be spying on her through the window? Could he be watching her?

Stepping backward, she peered through a sagging set of miniblinds and caught a glimpse of a large, black nose and a wagging tail.

Her watcher was a dog. Just another dog, thank heaven. Man, she was flustered. Idly, she puzzled over why this pooch merited indoor status, when the ones out at the road were surely as lovable. And then it hit her that her father could have other children. Kids he valued more dearly, for some reason, than Josie and her sisters.

Why on earth hadn’t she contacted him before making this trip?

She was impetuous, that was why. Gabe told her that often enough. But if she didn’t think well on her feet, she wouldn’t survive as an interior designer. Clients changed their minds all the time.

That was what she told Gabe in response to his lectures. The man drove her insane sometimes. Lord help her if he ever learned she had a thing for him. Clearly she was confusing her feelings—craving the attention of a strong man.

But Gabe was her good friend, and not boyfriend material for Josie. He couldn’t find out about her crush. That was all there was to it.

And she’d never tell him that her mother would have agreed with him about her impulsiveness. Ella had always encouraged Josie to follow her sisters’ examples, and think long and hard before she acted.

That was another reason Josie was here. Their isolated childhood had made all three of the Blume sisters feel different. Within the family, however, Josie was the only oddball. Her sisters were reserved and thoughtful; she was loud and reckless. They excelled at math and science; she’d had to work to conquer those subjects.

But whenever something in the house had broken, Josie had been the go-to girl. She didn’t even look like her family. They were tall, slim and fair-skinned. She was short, buxom and dark.

Did she take after her father? Did she act like him?

She’d sought out her father for Lilly’s sake. Truly she had. But Josie was also here for herself.

She wouldn’t bother with ringing the doorbell again. The dog stood at the window, wagging tongue and tail, but there were no noises from within. Obviously, no one was home.

Josie was both disappointed and relieved. As she returned to her truck, she determined to follow proper procedures the next time she attempted to meet her father. If she tried again. She’d send a letter and follow it up with a phone call.

The outside dogs started a frenzied round of barking that caused Josie to glance toward the road. A shiny red pickup had just pulled into the drive.

Oh, God. That must be him. Man, she was scared!

Clutching her sweater to her chest, Josie watched the pickup window. A sober-faced man lifted a hand off his steering wheel in greeting, then the woman passenger waved, too.

Her father had never divorced her mother, so new questions arose.

In that instant, Josie envisioned how tough it would be to approach that front porch Welcome sign and announce, “Hi, Dad and Whoever. I’m the daughter you never bothered to meet. Aren’t I clever to look you up? Now, let’s discuss your health.”

Maybe such a jarring proclamation wasn’t necessary. Before she identified herself, she could acquaint herself with him in a safe way. If she offered a bogus name and reason for being there, she could simply talk to him. If he behaved decently enough, she’d tell him the truth: that she was his third daughter, here with questions about any seizure disorders.

That was plan enough for now.

The man steered the pickup to the opposite side of the drive to park, allowing her the space to get her truck turned around. The woman got out first. She was about Josie’s height and stocky, with rust-colored curls and solemn brown eyes that filled the frames of her purple-rimmed glasses.

When the man stood up, Josie noticed he was very tall and thin. The woman had already climbed the porch steps, but he approached the house with a more cautious gait.

He was older than Josie had imagined—perhaps in his seventies. His blue buttoned shirt and tan pants hung loosely on a gaunt frame, and his head was saved from total baldness by a low fringe of wiry hair. He reminded her of someone…some celebrity—Art Garfunkel! Except that this man wore bifocals and his hair was snowy white.

He stopped beside the woman, peering shyly at Josie. “Gonna introduce us, Brenda?”

Josie felt a heaviness in her chest, and it took a second for her to realize the source of her disappointment. She’d hoped to have her father’s eyes or his hair or his build. She’d dreamed that her father would take one look at her, recognize who she was and pull her into a hug.

She’d prayed for that easy connection.

Before the woman could announce that their visitor was a stranger to her, Josie offered her hand. “Hi, I’m Sarah. Sarah, ah, Thomas.” She’d used her middle and Gabe’s last names. As she turned to grasp her father’s hand for the first time, she said, “If you’re Roderick Blume, I’m here to see you.”

Lying about her name didn’t feel half as strange as saying his. Her mother had always referred to her father as him, that fool man or Rick. Josie’s Internet search had been lengthened by days, until she had followed yet another wrong path and discovered she should be searching for a Roderick and not a Richard.

“I’m Rick Blume and this is Brenda,” he said. “Can we help you with something?”

“Invite her inside,” Brenda urged. “You’re late taking your pills and I’m too hungry to keep dinner waiting tonight.” After unlocking the door, she pushed it open and spoke gently to the dog as she made her way inside.

The man…Rick…her father—Josie wasn’t even sure how to think of him—knit his brow. “You’re not selling anything, are you?”

“No, I—”

“You’re not from the county? The dogs get fresh water three times a day, and Brenda feeds them an expensive, high-protein food she buys online.”

“I’m not here about the dogs. I’m visiting from Augusta,” she said, deciding to stick to a version of the truth. “I know your relatives there.”

Her father backed up a step. Josie got the impression that he’d prefer dealing with the dreaded salesperson or an animal welfare worker, rather than someone snooping around about his past. “You mean Ella?” he asked, studying Josie. “Or the girls? They’d be ’bout your age, I guess.”

“All of them.” Josie forced a calm expression.

Rick’s eyes grew dark, and she waited patiently while he wrestled with the worries or regrets he should have dealt with a long time ago.

After a moment, he opened the door. “Down, Gracie!” he told the dog as he waved Josie inside.

Gracie sniffed Josie’s hand, then trotted to a floral armchair near the window and stood, as if to communicate that this was the preferred spot for guests.

“Have a seat,” Rick prompted.

She did so, folding her sweater across her lap. When Gracie sat at her feet, Josie leaned forward to rub the dog’s silky ears. Her father crossed to the end of the sofa nearest the kitchen and yanked a blue tea towel from between the cushions. Bending slightly, he spread it across the worn armrest and tucked it in at the back. Then he sat down, sighed and knocked it half off again with his elbow.

He must sit in that same spot all the time. He must repeat those motions several times a day.

Questions were being answered without any need for conversation. Rick Blume was fair-skinned, cautious and methodical.

Nothing at all like her.

When Brenda returned to the living room to offer Rick a glass of water and a handful of pills, he grinned wryly at Josie’s concerned gaze. “When you get to be my age, the pharmacist has to help keep the old heart ticking.”

Heart ticking. Could this problem be seizure related? And he’d been driving. Did that mean anything?

Josie hmmmed her concern, hoping to draw explanations.

“I was always strong as an ox,” he said. “Years of eating fried bologna and kraut dogs gave me a heart attack coupla years ago. Now I live on pills and greens.”

It didn’t sound as if he had a seizure disorder, but she couldn’t be certain without asking specifically. Josie watched her father swallow the pills and return the glass to Brenda, and a new worry invaded her thoughts. What if the shock of learning her identity canceled the effects of those pills? What if the man died here and now? From a seizure. A heart attack. Shock.

“Would you drink some coffee or iced tea?” Brenda asked Josie on her way to the kitchen.

“No, thanks.” Josie wished she could follow Brenda and escape out the back door. Her father had just said he’d always been as strong as an ox. He drove a truck. If he’d suffered from epilepsy or some other disorder, it must be well under control.

Josie’s sister and brother-in-law would work until Lilly’s condition was controlled or extinguished. Why disturb an old man’s contented life? Perhaps Gabe and her sisters were right.

“How are they?” Rick asked, causing Josie to jump. He leaned forward on the sofa, as if eager to hear the answer.

This was her opening. Ella died seven years ago, but her children are great, she might tell him. Then, Enjoy your life. And Goodbye.

“They are fine,” she said. “More than fine, actually. They are amazing people.”

“Are they?” He peered into Josie’s eyes, nodding slowly. “Brenda’s cousin read about Ella’s passing in the Kansas City paper several years ago. I thought about contacting the children then, but figured I was too late.”

“You did?”

He sat back in the chair, his hand trembling when he lifted it to remove his glasses. As he directed his grimace downward to rub the lenses against the tea towel, he said, “Ella didn’t want me to come around and disrupt her plans for those girls, but I missed knowing them.”

Whatever had happened between her parents to split them up, the man didn’t act monstrous now. Perhaps he’d simply fallen victim to Mother’s fierce personality, as Josie and her sisters had.

“Do you want me to tell you about them?” Josie asked.

He readjusted his glasses over his ears and nose, then stared across at her. A moment later, he gave another nod.

There was so much to tell. Josie was proud of her sisters. They were exceptional. She sometimes wondered if she’d have survived her childhood if Callie and Isabel, the middle sister, hadn’t been around to buffer the experience. It would be tougher to brag about herself, but Rick’s reaction to that particular description should be interesting.

“Callie’s a research scientist who lives in Wichita with her husband, Ethan,” she began. “They have a kindergarten-aged boy named Luke and a baby girl named Lilly.”

She might have mentioned Lilly’s seizures then, but her father pulled off his glasses again. Josie realized they had fogged. He blinked a few times, then wiped his index finger against the corner of his eyes. Was their conversation affecting him? God, Josie hoped so.

“Calliope was smart as a whip,” he said as he laid the wire-rimmed spectacles atop the towel. “I could tell that by the time she was old enough to talk.”

His sweet, tremulous smile was encouraging. Without his glasses, she could see that his eyes were a soft gray, like Callie’s, and that his eyebrows had the same wide and pleasing arch that Isabel’s did.

She’d definitely found her father.

“She’s still smart.”

Josie remembered the billfold she kept in her truck’s glove compartment. She’d crammed the accordion-style photo sleeve full of niece and nephew pictures. Should she go out and get them? Was this the right moment to tell her father the truth?

“And the youngest girl was only a tiny thing last time I saw her,” her father said.

Josie thought for a moment he was speaking about her. She was about to mention the fact that he’d actually left before she was born, until he added, “She was a happy thing, with pretty blue eyes and wavy brown hair.”

Josie’s hair was board-straight, her eyes hazel. Her father had just described Isabel. Had he forgotten that he had another daughter? Well, he did. And right now she felt ignored, abandoned and outraged.

She should have escaped when she could.

“That little girl followed her mama around as if they were attached at the heart by a strand of Elly’s yarn,” Rick added. “How is she?”

“You mean Isabel?” Josie prompted.

“That’s right, Isabel,” he said. “I do love that name, and I got to choose it for her. What’s she doing?”

“She married a Colorado law professor a couple of years ago. She and Trevor live near Boulder and have a one-year-old daughter named Darlene. Izzy works with kids at a wilderness camp, and also runs Blumecrafts. Remember their mother’s business?”

“I do remember. Hard to believe the baby has a child now, too.”

Josie was the baby, not Isabel. Why didn’t he mention her? She worked up the guts to ask. She should just say it. I don’t take after Ella physically, but I’m just as stubborn and I, too, inherited her artistic talent.

If Rick had made the slightest indication that he knew about and was interested in her, she might have found the courage. Or if she wasn’t alone here to deal with an old man’s reaction to her news.

Suddenly, she wished she’d invited Gabe. Maybe. She leaned on him enough already.

“Do those girls want to meet me?” Rick asked.

“Callie and Isabel?” Josie queried, clarifying for herself that he wasn’t speaking of all three of them now. That poor health or a mixture of medicines or nervous forgetfulness hadn’t caused him to omit mention of the third daughter.

“Of course. Calliope and Isabel. My children.”

The rock that had lodged in Josie’s chest earlier seemed to turn, piercing the tender flesh around her heart.

He didn’t know about her. Or if he did, he’d forgotten or blocked out the memory.

What would happen if she just got up and left now, and never told a soul about her trip to Woodbine today? The thought was tempting. But her father had asked her a question, and even now those cool gray eyes sought an answer.

Did her sisters want to meet him?

No. They had made it clear that they saw no advantage to meeting their father. Despite Josie’s arguments. Despite Lilly’s condition. Whenever the subject came up, they both said that Ella must have had good cause to warn against the contact.

If Josie told her sisters about Rick’s apparent forgetfulness concerning the third baby, they might change their minds. They might want to meet him to support Josie.

Yet to all appearances, Rick was harmless. He was just a quiet old man. And he had expressed a genuine interest, at least in them.

“Maybe they’ll want to meet you,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll mention the idea to them.”

“You do that,” he said, standing. He shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around in a glass candy dish. After pulling out a business card, he returned and handed it to Josie. “This card’s for Brenda’s dog-breeding outfit, but the phone number’s the same. Have your friends call me, er, Sarah? Sarah Thomas, didn’t you say?”

She stared blankly at him until the dog cued her by trotting to the front door. “Sarah. Right,” Josie said. She stuck the card in her pocket and allowed her father to let her out, then waved from her truck window before she looped out of the drive.

She hadn’t even talked about Lilly’s condition. She’d gotten hints that her father might not have a history of seizures, but she hadn’t asked.

She’d learned a lot of other things today, however. Rick Blume was just an old man, either forgetful or ignorant of a few truths about his past. Thoughtful, in some ways. Introspective—like her sisters.

Josie preferred action. People. Noise.

The more she’d spoken to her father today, the more she’d been reminded of everyone but her. In a family of tortoises, she was the only hare.

She wanted to think for a while, to figure out how or if she should return to discuss Lilly, and if she should break the other news to her father at all.

Congratulations, you have a girl! She has brown hair and hazel eyes, and weighs a smidge over a hundred and thirty pounds.

That wouldn’t be right. She also wanted to settle into her feelings before she told her sisters that she’d contacted Rick Blume. She wouldn’t risk inviting the man into their lives if doing so would harm her family.

She wouldn’t breathe a word about this to Gabe, either. He’d probably just give her a hard time for not warning him about her trip to Woodbine today. And then he’d proceed to tell her exactly how she should have handled it and what she should do next. The man liked being in charge.

But then, Gabe had strong ideas about a father’s role in a child’s life. Real strong ideas. She couldn’t fault him for feeling the way he did. His dad had been his hero.

She simply wanted to handle this in her own time, and in her own way. Keeping the secret might be hard. Josie might have invited trouble by concealing her identity, but she hadn’t anticipated her father’s response, or the pain she’d feel when he hadn’t mentioned her.