Lost Cause

“Listen, I’ve got some things to do. I’ll, ah, be back later. If that’s okay.”

She rose, too, staring at him as if he’d gone loco. He didn’t care. He had to get out of here, away from her affection, from her sympathy, from her tears. He was feeling smothered.

“Of course it is.” She hurried around the counter into the kitchen and fumbled in a drawer, coming back with a key held in her outstretched hand. “Here. In case I’m not home. The first bedroom on the left is yours.”

“I…thanks.” He lurched toward the living room, his leg almost giving out on him. “I’ll just be an hour or two.” Or three or four.

With more dignity than he’d expected, she said to his back, “I told you if you needed space that was okay. While you’re here, consider this your home. You don’t need permission to come and go.”

At the front door, his hand on the knob, he paused with his head bent and his back still to her. “I’m sorry.”

Voice gentle, she said, “Don’t be. You’ve given me a gift today. You never, ever, have anything to be sorry for.”

After a moment, he nodded and blundered out, wishing that was true but knowing it wouldn’t be. He hadn’t yet had a relationship with another human being that hadn’t meant being sorry most of the time.

He doubted shared genes were going to change that.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT IN THE HELL had happened to him back there?

Gary rested his elbows on his knees and stared out at a body of water that smelled like ocean but seemed to lack waves. He’d hoped there was a beach and had ridden downhill until he found the ferry landing and—sure enough—a public beach, mostly empty if he ignored the dock fifty yards to his left and the idling cars and people leaning on the railing.

If he looked straight out, he could almost imagine he was all alone. The hoarse cries of seagulls suited his mood, and he liked the smell of salt and drying seaweed and rotting fish carried by the cool, strong breeze. Once he thought he saw a dark head crown the choppy water. A seal or sea lion. He didn’t know one from the other.

Feet crunched on gravel but passed behind him without the owner feeling compelled to initiate cheery greetings, for which he was grateful. Not much given to self-examination, Gary knew he needed to make an exception.

He valued his ability to stay in control of himself, his emotions, his destiny, above all else. Holly Lynn had accused him of being a cold son of a bitch, which had irritated him no end. Why did she marry him if she wanted all that crap? He hadn’t changed because he put a ring on her finger. He felt; he just didn’t like to lay himself open.

Gary envisioned emotions as oil spewing from a well, thick and black. It would shoot skyward and splatter the landscape with gummy blobs if you didn’t cap it. If he’d learned one lesson growing up in the Lindstrom house, it was to cap every sickening gush of rage and fear.

But today… Damn it, he’d panicked! A man who was better at being reckless than cautious, he’d run like a scared bunny rabbit.

And he didn’t even know why.

He’d been doing okay, talking about the parents who’d died without making adequate arrangements for their children, getting a sense of a sister who was unlike any other woman he’d ever known, telling her a little about himself. After the way he’d acted, what was she thinking to give him a key to her house?

It wasn’t even the subject of social workers, although he did detest them, or Harold’s belt, that had gotten to him. Brooding, Gary realized it was her reaction. She’d wanted to go back in time and leap between him and his adoptive father. Her instinct had been to defend him.

Why? He was genuinely baffled.

He was also freaked. This woman he didn’t know felt something for him he didn’t understand. Something no one else had ever felt. Not even his adoptive mother, who had at least pretended to love him but deferred to her husband’s harsh brand of discipline.

So, okay. The way things happened, he could see some emotions getting frozen in time. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been a little kid, and she was the big sister. Maybe she still thought she needed to protect him.

What he didn’t get was why her trying had sucked all the air out of the room and made him feel… He drew a blank. He didn’t even know what he’d felt. Thinking about feelings wasn’t something he did much. Capping them, sure. Conducting analysis on them…not so much.

All he knew was, she’d scared the crap out of him.

He wanted to head back to Santa Fe. Leave her a phone message saying, You’re a nice woman, but I’m not the little boy you remember. Nothing to do with you, but I just don’t see this reunion going anywhere.

Two reasons he knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. One was the curiosity she’d aroused, and the other was his memory of that pang of regret because he hadn’t died.

A week, he reminded himself. Maybe two weeks. Look at the pictures, get to know the sisters, then promise to exchange Christmas cards. Everybody would be satisfied, including him.

Inhaling a deep breath of sea air, he nodded. Yeah, a week. He could do that.

That moment of…whatever it had been—it was natural. Normal. His version of his sister’s tears.

Giving a grunt of amusement, he thought, What d’you know, Holly Lynn. I do get emotional.

NO ENORMOUS BLACK-AND-CHROME motorcycle sat in front of her house or in her driveway.

Suzanne got out of her car and looked at the blank windows of the house. Had she imagined that her brother had been here at all?

“Hey,” her neighbor said behind her. “How’d it go?”

She hadn’t heard his truck or a door, but there he stood, just on his side of the property line. Today he wore a gray suit, white shirt and dark tie. Lowering her gaze, she saw that his black shoes gleamed. Of course.

“It?”

His brows rose. “Wasn’t that woman from the adoption agency coming today?”

Of course that’s what he was talking about! He didn’t know about her brother.

“We…had to reschedule,” she said. “I had an unexpected visitor. You may, um, see him around. He’ll be staying here for a couple of weeks.”

She hoped.

Her neighbor’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Your ex-husband?” he asked, with noticeable reserve.

Her cheeks heated at the very introduction of a topic they had never discussed, and never would if she had anything to do with it.

“My brother.”

The brows went higher. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“I haven’t seen him in a long time. Years.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I’m glad that you mentioned he’s here. In case I see a stranger going in and out.”

“Thank you again for mowing the lawn,” she said to his back as he started toward his house.

“Any time.”

He’d gone in his front door before Suzanne shook herself and went up the walk to her own door. When she let herself in, the house felt like always: empty.

Gary hadn’t returned.

She peeked in the guest room to see if he’d come and gone, perhaps leaving a bag here. But it looked just as she’d left it.

What if he didn’t return? Had she somehow scared him away? She didn’t know how, except maybe for the tears she’d shed on his chest. His stiffness had told her he wasn’t used to comforting women in the midst of emotional storms.

But he hadn’t left then. So why the panic later?

She wandered restlessly, unable to settle down to knitting or even television. She’d been so eager to see Gary again, she hadn’t even taken the day’s receipts by the bank—she’d just thrown the money in a bag and brought it home.

It was getting easier to think of him as Gary instead of Lucien. Lucien still was and probably always would be the little boy of her memory, skinny, quick, full of energy and intense highs and lows.

Her mother would try to put him down for a nap and, by the time he was a year old, invariably fail. “Just a short nap,” she’d beg, and he’d giggle or scream, depending on his mood. Suzanne had thought it was funny, only now as an adult understanding her mother’s exhaustion and frustration. How brave she’d been to have another baby so soon! Or perhaps she just hadn’t used birth control because of her faith. Suzanne didn’t think of her parents as devout, but they had considered themselves Catholic and gone to church now and again.

If they’d lived, would they have kept having babies? Maybe she’d have been the oldest of eight, or ten. If so, she would have spent her youth diapering and babysitting instead of mourning and rebelling.

She would have to ask Aunt Marie sometime. She might know if her sister took birth control pills or considered them a sin. If nothing else, she’d undoubtedly cleaned out the medicine cabinet along with the rest of the house when it was to be sold.

Suzanne checked her voice mail, but there was no message.

The phone in her hand, she hesitated. Gary hadn’t wanted her to call Carrie right then, but there was no reason not to now, was there?

Her mind made up, she dialed.

A boy answered. “Hello, Kincaid residence,” he said by rote.

“Hey, Michael. It’s Aunt Suzanne.” As always, she marveled at being an aunt. Okay, not by blood, but what difference did that make? Michael was one of the world’s great kids. She asked about his day and they talked for a minute before she asked, “Is your mom home?”

“Yeah! Mommy!” he yelled.

Suzanne winced.

A moment later, her sister came on. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Suzanne said.

“How did it go?” Carrie asked eagerly.

There was that “it” again. No surprise that Carrie thought she was going to get a report on the dreaded, but eagerly awaited, home visit. “It was postponed,” Suzanne said.

“Oh, no! What an awful thing to do to you! Now you’ll have to keep worrying, and clean again, and—”

“It wasn’t them, Carrie,” Suzanne interrupted. “She came.”

“Then…then what happened?” her sister asked in puzzlement.

“When I answered the door, I noticed this guy sitting on his motorcycle out front. I commented, and Rebecca—the adoption counselor—said, ‘That guy says he’s your brother.’”

A quick rush of breath told her Carrie guessed.

“Lucien?” she whispered.

“It was him.” Her voice caught. “I started to cry and flung myself into his arms. Rebecca said she’d call me to reschedule.”

“He really came? Just like that? No warning? No…” Amazement was morphing into indignation.

“Who needs warning? He came, Carrie.” Wonder spread in Suzanne’s chest, a warm glow. “I hugged him. We talked.”

On a note of alarm, Carrie asked, “Why are you saying that in the past tense? He’s still there, isn’t he?”

“He said he was going to stay for a few days. I gave him a key to the house. But I had to go back to work, of course, and he isn’t here. I hope…” She swallowed. “I think I overwhelmed him.”

“What’s he like? Is he nicer than he sounded on the phone that time I called him?”

“I don’t know yet. He’s cautious. He rides a big, black motorcycle, and he told me he had a bad accident a few months back when he lost control on a mountain curve. He just got out of a cast last week. His hair is longish, and he’s sinfully handsome even if he is our brother…”

“You mean, since he’s our brother.”

Suzanne laughed. “Right. He has to be, doesn’t he?”

In her mercurial way, Carrie shifted gears. “Why didn’t you call me then?”

“I assumed you’d be in class. Also…he wanted to take it slow. I think the idea of two of us scared him.”

“I can see that. Wow. He sounded so…indifferent. To the point of cruelty. I thought if he ever made contact it would be years from now.”

“I know!” Suzanne heard an engine and hurried to the front of the house, only to be disappointed by a glimpse of the back of a souped-up pickup she recognized as belonging to a teenager in the next block. “He seems genuinely curious, Carrie. But also… I don’t know. I got the feeling he wishes he wasn’t.”

Her sister was silent for a moment. “Boy, do I understand that.”

They’d become so close, Suzanne sometimes almost forgot that Carrie had been less than thrilled to find out she was adopted, and had taken weeks before she was willing to talk to Suzanne. So it made sense that she, more than Suzanne, truly understood that their brother, too, felt conflicted.

“Why hasn’t he come back?” her sister asked in frustration. Carrie was more impulsive, less patient than Suzanne.

“I don’t know. I told him if he needed space not to worry, so I can’t exactly call the cops and ask them to put out an APB.”

“Suzanne…you’re sure this guy is Lucien?”

“You mean, versus some con man trying to take me for everything I’m worth?” It felt good to laugh. “I’m sure. He looks so much like Daddy, it…shook me.”

“Do you want Mark and me to come up this evening?”

Suzanne hesitated. “You, maybe,” she finally said, slowly. “Can you come?”

“The minute Mark gets home to be with Michael. He’s due any minute. Do you want me to call when I’m going out the door?”

“No, I’ll just expect you when I see you.” She paused. “Thank you, Carrie.”

“Are you kidding? I can hardly wait to meet him!”

After they’d said goodbye, Suzanne took the phone back to the kitchen, then peeked out the front window again before deciding she didn’t want Gary to catch her waiting there like some parent annoyed because he’d violated curfew. She would just…get on with her evening, she resolved. Pretend her long-lost brother hadn’t popped into her life before fleeing out of it again. Pretend she wasn’t waiting for the sound of a key in the lock with as much anxiety as that terrified parent.

Or the big sister she’d always been.

GARY EASED HIS BIKE down the street and to the curb in front of Suzanne Chauvin’s house. Dusk had come and gone, and now he was a little embarrassed that he hadn’t come back sooner. He hadn’t wanted to assume she’d feed him, so he’d grabbed a bite out, but he found himself worrying that Suzanne had plunged into an orgy of cooking, like women did, and was in there gazing sadly at too much food gone cold.

A strange car was in the driveway, a bright blue Miata, which meant his sister had company. Gary was pretty sure he knew who it was.

His anxiety had heightened the closer he got to Suzanne’s house, but he’d made up his mind to see this thing through, so he grabbed his bag and walked up to the door. There he hesitated, then rang the bell.

Suzanne came to let him in and exclaimed, “You don’t need to ring! Pretend you live here.”

“Thanks.” He stepped in with a wary glance. “You have company?”

“Carrie’s in the kitchen.” She gave him an apprehensive look. “I hope you don’t mind that I called her.”

What could he say? “No, that’s fine.”

“Why don’t you go put your bag in your room, and then come meet her. Have you eaten?”

“Yeah. I hope you hadn’t planned dinner,” he said awkwardly.

She flapped a hand. “Don’t worry. I know all of this feels strange.”

Strange? That was one way of putting it, he decided, depositing his bag on the bed in the guest room, then starting back to the kitchen.

At first glance, the two women sitting at the table looked so much alike he couldn’t have guessed which was Suzanne if he hadn’t just seen her and known what she was wearing. Two dark heads were bent toward each other, two fine-boned hands fingered wineglasses. Dinner plates were pushed to one side. From the smell, he guessed they’d had spaghetti.

He must have made a sound, because both heads lifted in unison and he found himself being inspected critically by his little sister Carrie.

Yeah, he could tell them apart after all. Her hair was curly, he saw, but more important was the challenge in her brown eyes, the tilt to her chin. Little Carrie was feistier than her sister, less inclined to trust. And to weep, thank God.

“Carrie,” he said, trying out the sound of her name.

She stood. “That’s me.”

Her gaze seemed to take in the scuffs on his boots, the deliberately relaxed way he held his hands at his sides to hide his tension, the set of his shoulders, the length of his hair. He doubted she missed a thing.

“So, you decided it wasn’t too late, after all.”

He recognized her reference to the phone call she’d made to try to persuade him to make contact with Suzanne. Far as he’d been concerned, the overture had come too late to mean jack.

But it would seem he’d been wrong.

“Getting chewed out makes a man think.”

If he’d expected her to blush, he’d miscalculated.

“Good,” she said with satisfaction.

“So you’re the baby.”

She planted one fist on her hip. “If by that you mean your baby sister, yes, I am.”

“Linette.” He sampled the taste of that name, too.

“Lucien,” she fired back.

“Let’s go with Gary.”

His leg ached today, but he tried to disguise his limp as he crossed the kitchen.

“Wine?” Suzanne asked, lifting the bottle. An empty wineglass sat at the third place set at the table.

He nodded. “Thanks.”

All seated, the three looked at each other. Damn, he thought, with a feeling of unreality.

As if she’d read his mind, Suzanne said, “We haven’t been together like this in twenty-six years. And then, you were in a booster seat and Carrie in a high chair.”

“Probably rubbing peas in my hair,” his little sister agreed, unruffled.

He had absolutely no idea what he would have been doing. Flicking whole peas at his bossy big sister? Hanging on her every word? Kicking his heels in boredom? Funny thing, not to know what you were like as a small child. Seemed like a natural memory to retain, a part of your sense of self.

“You’d have been squirming,” Suzanne told him, her gaze perceptive. “Nowadays, a doctor would probably have labeled you as hyperactive. You couldn’t sit still to save your life.”

“I’m still not much good at sitting,” he admitted.

“You’re doing just fine right now,” Carrie said.

“You haven’t bored me yet.”

“Well, don’t I feel special to hear that.”

A laugh in her voice, Suzanne said, “Listen to you two, squabbling as if you’d been doing it all your life.”

With shock, Gary realized she was right. And it wasn’t as if he’d ever had any practice. She’d just been a baby the last time he saw her. She wouldn’t have even said her first word yet. And he hadn’t had an adopted brother or sister.

“I’m just testing you.” His little sister grinned, then held out a hand. “Truce?”

“Truce.” He shook.

Sipping wine, they asked questions about his life, which he gave sketchy answers to. They seemed to notice how much he wasn’t saying, but didn’t comment, which he appreciated. He told them briefly about Holly Lynn, a city health department official of all damn things.

“I guess I’m not made for marriage.”

“Carrie seems to be the only one of us who is,” Suzanne commented.

His little sister’s face softened. “I wasn’t so sure I was, either, until I met Mark. You’ve talked to him,” she said to Gary. “The P.I.? Did Suzanne tell you I married him? He’s a good guy.”

“He seemed decent when he called.”

If she was underwhelmed by this accolade, she ignored that, too. “Mark has a son, Michael. He’s six, in first grade this year. He’s accepted me wholeheartedly, for which I feel blessed.”

“His mother?”

“Died when he was two. He barely remembers her.” She paused a beat. “Mark and his wife adopted him.”

A lot of that going around.

“Tell us about your adoptive parents,” Suzanne suggested. “Mark said you grew up in the central valley in California?”

“Outside Bakersfield. Harold is a farmer. I was driving a tractor by the time I was ten.”

“Really?” She looked appalled.

He shrugged. “Farming families need their kids. He and…” Mom. He’d almost said Mom. “…Judith couldn’t have their own little worker, so they went out to find one.”

Both sisters stared at him. “You think they adopted you just to provide labor for the farm?”

Voice devoid of emotion, Gary said, “Harold told me he wanted to get an older boy. He was indulging his wife to bring home one as young as I was.”

“That’s awful!” Carrie breathed.

He shrugged again. “Some people take home a kitten so they can cuddle it and have something to coo at. Some just want a mouser.”

“And you were the mouser. Oh, God.” Suzanne pressed a hand to her breast, her eyes huge.

He hoped like hell she didn’t start to cry again.

“My adoptive mother was nice enough, until she got fed up with Harold and just upped and left one day. It wasn’t so bad.” Until then. A part of him had died that day.

“I thought adoption agencies were supposed to be picky! How could they have let those people take you?” Carrie demanded.

“Maybe Suzanne should ask Ms. Wilson,” he suggested. “My guess is, she’d use a bunch of statistics to claim that most adoptive homes are happy.”

“I would give anything…” Suzanne began.

He shifted in alarm. There she went again, ready to fling her body onto the tracks to stop the train.

Too bad the train had derailed twenty-six years ago.

“It’s over and done,” he said flatly. “That’s what I tried to tell you when your P.I. contacted me.”

“We can’t change the past,” Suzanne argued, “but we can make the future better. We can be a family again.”

Since he had only a distant acquaintance with the whole concept, he wasn’t all that sure what she had in mind, except he guessed holiday get-togethers figured in it somewhere. He’d probably better find out just what she did envision, before he found himself sucked in.

When he didn’t comment, she said, “Do you want to see pictures now?”

He gave a clipped nod, less than sure he really did.

She fetched a big photo album bound in green leather and wordlessly set it in front of him at the table. Then she sat again and both sisters gazed expectantly at him.

Throat constricted, he opened it.

On the first page was a wedding photo. God almighty, Gary thought in shock. He could have been the groom. Dark, lean, a dent in the cheek because the man was smiling at his bride. She looked like Suzanne and Carrie, startlingly so. Pretty, brunette, delicate to the point of being ethereal.

His mother. His father.

People who might have loved him.

Very softly, his big sister said, “Do you see why I burst into tears at the sight of you?”

He lifted his gaze but didn’t really see her. “Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse.

More wedding photos followed, some including another young woman who resembled the bride as well as an older woman who must be…his grandmother?

Silent, staring with a hungriness he didn’t want either of his sisters to see, Gary kept turning pages. He saw the young couple with a Volkswagen Beetle, then a tiny house, run-down in the first photo but painted and edged with a white picket fence in later ones. The woman acquired a radiance along with an enlarging belly, and then suddenly a shrivelled, frowning infant appeared. He had to look up after seeing that picture, as if to measure it against the beautiful woman who sat at the table, the one who’d been that infant.

He could see it better as she became a laughing toddler and a stick-thin girl with pigtails tied with red bows. Gary tensed when he saw that the woman was pregnant again, but still felt unprepared when he turned a page to reveal a photo of another newborn baby, this one wrapped in a pastel blue blanket.

That was him. He stared for the longest time, then shifted his gaze to the cluster of photos on the next page, all showing the baby at the center of attention. The woman held him against her shoulder and had her head turned. She looked at him with so much love, it tingled in the air. The pigtailed girl making a horrible face at him in one photo, cradling him in another for a staged picture. The man—his father, giving him a bottle, smiling down at him.