Perfect Family Read online

  “I married the foreman. My family didn’t approve, of course, but I loved him, and no one could tell me anything.” She pulled out a photo. “Both your father and I were married the same year.” She pulled out a photo of a man and woman who were obviously posing in front of the house. Harding. His arm was around the woman. She was blond, her tresses falling over half her face. Her skirt was short for the time, her blouse more than a little snug. She was startlingly beautiful.

  “Her name was Lori,” Sarah said, a harshness entering her voice for the first time.

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “In some ways,” Sarah retorted.

  “Alex said she died the same time … that Harding disappeared?”

  “I think that’s why he left. He couldn’t remain here with the memories. He loved her beyond reason.” Sarah turned the page to another photo. A young Sarah stood next to a tall lanky man whose dark hair spilled over his forehead. He wore a jaunty smile. “That’s David,” she said. “I loved him beyond reason, too, so I quite understood how Harding felt about Lori.”

  Something unbearably sad tinged the words. They seemed to echo in the room.

  Jessie couldn’t speak, didn’t know how to break through the sudden curtain of emotion. She had a hundred questions, maybe even more, but she felt it would be an intrusion into someone’s dark place. She held herself still, though she was greedy for any piece of information about her father.

  “He always had a way with horses,” Sarah said after a moment. She was ruminating, her voice soft with what were obviously fond memories. “That’s how we found you. We looked toward the horses.” Then she looked up at Jessie. “Was he happy?”

  Jessie weighed her reply. He had not been happy. He’d … endured. He’d spent most of his leisure hours in a bottle. Now she was beginning to understand the complexity of the demons that caused it. “He enjoyed doing what he was good at,” she finally said.

  “You are diplomatic,” Sarah said, obviously seeing through her words. “Tell me about your mother.”

  Jessie had no good answer for that. “I never knew her,” she said. “She left us when I was very small. My father never talked about her.” Her gaze met Sarah’s. “You’ve had detectives. Perhaps you know more than I do.”

  Sarah shook her head. “We picked up your father’s trail just months ago. I had hoped that we would find him alive, but we were so pleased to hear he had a daughter.”

  “We still don’t know it is the same man,” Jessie said, even though she was now convinced it was. The photos didn’t lie, regardless of the intervening years.

  “I am,” Sarah said. She reached out and took Jessie’s hand. She hesitated, then asked, “Did he leave any personal effects? Photos? Books?”

  It was a curious question, but then Sarah was apparently looking for any information about her brother, about how he’d lived. It was natural enough, Jessie supposed. She herself was hungry for information about her father. So why would she question Sarah’s desire for the same? But she hesitated. “We moved a lot. We lived—I guess you would call it—light. His only interest was horses. I can’t remember seeing him with anything but breeding books. Maybe a veterinary textbook. Horse magazines. Racing forms.” It was the truth. Not the whole truth. She didn’t know why she held back, perhaps because she didn’t want this woman to know what she suspected about her father, that in the last few years he’d bet against his own horses. It was the only way he could have accumulated enough money to leave her an inheritance. A start in life. She hadn’t known about it until he was dead. The money had meant college, and he’d known how much she wanted that. But she also knew there had been only one way to get that much. Knowing he had done something that he detested so she would have a future, had been a wound never quite healed. She had thought about giving it back, but to whom? And so she had used it. She’d never been comfortable with that choice, though. She always felt as if she owed a debt.

  There was one other legacy, a primer dating back to the seventeenth century. Her father had given it to her when she was sixteen, one year before he’d died. “This might be very valuable someday,” he’d said. “Keep it safe.” He hesitated, then insisted in a whiskey-edged voice: “Promise me.”

  And she had. She kept it in a safe-deposit box along with her birth certificate, her diploma, and a few other items. And thank God she had. The burglar had torn her house apart, tearing up precious books, pulling out drawers, even turning over the mattress. She was lucky she had no valuables that appealed to him, and even luckier that he’d left Ben unharmed.

  She hadn’t even thought of the book in years, and suddenly the cover flashed in her mind, a washed-out gray that might have originally been blue.

  Keep it safe. For the first time she wondered about his words, wondered why she didn’t just blurt out its existence. But his voice was insistent in her mind and for some reason Sarah’s question made it even louder.

  She turned the page of the photo album and saw a young, dark-haired boy staring defiantly at the camera. His hair was too long, his face too thin, and even in the black-and-white view of the camera, his eyes were resentful. “Who is that?”

  “Ross. This was taken a month after he came to live with us.”

  She looked up. “Alex said he was adopted.”

  Sarah smiled stiffly.

  Jessie had learned long ago to detect changes in mood. She’d had to. Her father had been mercurial. And now she knew that the mood in the room had been muddied. The easy familiarity was gone. Sarah didn’t like Alex. Or maybe didn’t trust him for some reason. The image of the Cheshire Cat returned.

  She stored that in her mind for future reference. “Alex also said Ross runs the ranch.”

  Sarah’s frown faded. Pride shone bright from her face. It was very clear that she adored her son. “He took over from his father. He might as well have had Clements blood. He has the same talent your father did with horses, the same instinct.”

  “How old was he when you adopted him?”

  “Twelve. As you can see, he wasn’t very happy about it at first. He’d lived with his grandmother before she died, and she’d let him run wild. He wouldn’t be … civilized, he always claimed. And he wasn’t. I still never know what he is going to do. I had hoped he would come tonight …” Her voice trailed off.

  “I would only get him confused with another family member,” Jessie said gently. Vulnerability. If Sarah had one, it was her son. And the fact touched Jessie. Sarah had a kind of indomitable grandeur. Not the kind that goes with beauty, but with a sense of knowing who and what she was, and being comfortable with it. Her trousers were of thick denim, the kind one might wear while riding, and her boots were clean but obviously scuffed from use. Her eyes were bright and curious and her body still limber and graceful.

  “Tell me about the other family members,” she said.

  “There’s not that many,” Sarah said. “Heath didn’t have any children, and Hugh had only one before he died. I … couldn’t have children. Harry had two children, but one died in the Korean War—Cullen served there too—and one of Halden’s daughters died of polio. Sometimes, I feel we have a curse.” Then she shook her head as if to shoo away the thought and changed the subject. “I understand you exercised horses for your father. Do you like riding?”

  Jessie again felt discomfort about the way her life had been examined without her knowledge. She shivered inside as she imagined what else Alex’s detective had discovered. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling of violation Then, or now.

  Sarah put her hand on Jessie’s. “I know,” she said slowly, as if she’d read Jessie’s mind. “It mustn’t seem fair to you that we know about you and you know so little about us. I didn’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to find my brother. I always felt as if I should take care of him. And I didn’t succeed. That always haunted me. If only he’d come to me.”

  “What happened exactly?” Jessie tried again to exact information she sensed Sarah didn’t want to imp
art. She wasn’t sure whether she wanted an answer to the question, and yet it had burst forth. Too late now to reclaim it.

  “I don’t know. None of us do.” Sarah looked away and Jessie knew she was lying.

  “Then tell me about his wife.”

  Sarah shrugged slightly. “It was nearly fifty years ago. I don’t remember much.”

  But she did. Jessie knew that the woman remembered those years as if they were yesterday. She had seen it in Sarah’s eyes before she turned away.

  Jessie also knew she would learn little else about her father tonight and tried to stifle her sudden, intense irritation. She had shared information. She wanted some in return. Certainly more than she’d received.

  Sarah rose from the chair and put the album down on the table. “Perhaps you would like to borrow this tonight,” she said. “You can have a chance to study us. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “I would like that very much,” Jessie said. And perhaps she would learn more from some of the other family members. She had little seeds now. Perhaps they would grow.

  She followed Sarah back into the main room. Alex suddenly materialized out of nowhere with his ever-present smile. “Can I get you a drink?”

  Jessie looked around. It seemed everyone in the room had something in their hands. “A glass of wine?”

  “White or red?”

  “Red.”

  His smile widened. “Delighted to be of service.” He disappeared over toward a temporary bar. Sarah had also disappeared. Jessie took the opportunity to hide in a corner and watch the others chatting in small groups. She tried to put names and faces together, but there were more than thirty people, many with the last name of Clements. In mental defense, she started giving them names from Alice in Wonderland. Fitting, she thought, when she felt as if she were inhabiting those pages. Marc’s wife was the Duchess; Cullen Humpty Dumpty; and Sondra the Queen of Hearts. Others were the officious March Hare, the Gryphon, the sad Mock Turtle. Cullen’s twins were Tweedledee and Tweedledum; even their wives and children looked alike. She still assigned the Cheshire Cat to Alex. There was also a Katherine and her husband. Several others she would catalog them later. Her gaze searched the room, wondering if the mysterious Ross mingled somewhere within.

  The congressman was talking to a young man of about thirty or so. Jessie didn’t think she had met him yet; he must have arrived late. Halden Clements was still sitting in the comfortable chair, observing the crowd with a satisfied look. Most of the younger people had disappeared to some other room. The normal division between generations, she guessed.

  Then Alex returned with a glass of wine for her and something obviously stronger for himself. “How do you like Sarah?”

  “I like her very much, but I’m not exactly sure what to call her.”

  “I think Sarah will do just fine. Everyone calls her that, even Ross. Are you ready to take the blood test?”

  “Can’t you just find a piece of my hair or something?”

  “Surreptitiously?”

  “You did everything else surreptitiously,” she retorted.

  “But that was before we met you.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “You look skeptical,” he said with a grin.

  “Something about you does that to me.”

  “Now that really hurts.” But his gaze remained steady on hers.

  “Yes,” she said, suddenly making up her mind. “I will take it. For Sarah’s sake.”

  “You really enjoy puncturing my pride, don’t you?”

  She did, though she didn’t understand why. Probably because she knew she wasn’t really doing any damage. He seemed to enjoy banter. It had never come easy to her before, but now each retort flowed from her, and she enjoyed the easy camaraderie it seemed to forge.

  “Is that possible?”

  “You are doing a great job.” Then he sobered. “I know a doctor here in town. We could run by his office tomorrow.”

  “Afraid I’ll back out?”

  The smile left his face. “No, I don’t think that. But now that I have your agreement, let me introduce the other members of the clan.”

  She was beginning to feel like family. A sense of warm belonging filled her as she met first one Clements, then another, shared their smiles, heard their memories.

  Her family.

  For the first time, she dared to believe.

  five

  Jessie’s fingers smoothed over the battered photograph of Harding Clements. Her father?

  Photos didn’t lie. The resemblances were stark. Unmistakable. And yet she still didn’t want to admit that her father had lied to her. Nor did she want to explore what might have happened that would cause him to abandon all that should have been held dear.

  A shiver ran down her spine. Then another. A chill crept through her bones.

  Secrets? Her father? Sure, she knew he’d had some. But something this deep, this big?

  Parents were infallible when you were young. You loved them because they were your world. They were safety, security. Even when they were not perfect, they were a known entity and therefore believed, respected, and treasured. Maybe it was belonging. Jon Clayton had been all she had. And though he’d had faults and often retreated into a demon-infested world of his own, he’d never been physically abusive. Emotionally abusive? At times. But she had loved him so fiercely, she’d accepted it, had tried harder to be everything he’d wanted her to be. She had accepted him as he was, had thought that drink had been his only enemy.

  Had it really been his past?

  She pictured him in her mind again. He was wiry, almost gaunt. His hair had thinned, and his lips seldom smiled. He usually wore an old pair of jeans, a plaid shirt, and a denim jacket. A cigarette frequently dangled from his lips except when he was in a barn. He was careful around horses. Always. She’d often thought he preferred them to people. And to her.

  She looked back at the laughing figure in the photo. Carefree. Happy. And so young. It was difficult to think of her father ever being that age.

  There were other photos of him in the first pages of the album, one with him on horseback, another as a boy with a dog at his side. He’d never allowed her to have a dog; they’d always lived in other people’s houses, and it wouldn’t be fair, he’d said, to get an animal, then have to give it up.

  Anger simmered inside her as she stared at the picture, and she realized it had been building ever since Alex had appeared with his news. She had been cheated of a real home and everything that went with it: friends, support, family.

  Belonging.

  She’d always told herself it didn’t matter. Her father could have dumped her as her mother apparently had. He’d never shown much affection, but he’d always been there. She’d always hoped deep in her heart that he loved her.

  Why then had he kept her from his family?

  Those questions, she knew, would haunt her until she knew every one of the answers.

  She recalled every face she’d seen tonight, compared some of them to the photos in the album. She was also reminded of the tragedies that had touched the family: Hugh who had died in the Second World War, then Heath, who had died in a fire; Halden’s daughter, Louise, who’d died of polio at five; and Samuel, who’d died in the Korean War. There was something very sad about looking at faces of people long dead, particularly when they died young.

  Cullen, too, apparently had his near disaster, she thought as she saw a photo of a much younger Cullen in uniform. A rifle cradled in his arms, he stood with a group of other soldiers on a Korean hill.

  Too many for one family? Or was it normal? She had no way of knowing, but she found herself aching for each one of them.

  She tried to wipe away the cobwebs in her mind, looking for similarities between these people and the quiet, stern man who too often turned into a maudlin drinker. Grief curled up inside her and took a seat next to her anger.

  A cauldron of emotions turned her mind to mush.

  Jessie finally turne
d off the light, but she couldn’t rid her thoughts of the image of the five brothers and sister. Only two were alive now, but they had all looked so young and vital in the photo. But in her mind, time corroded that picture like acid through cloth.

  Alex would pick her up at ten in the morning for the blood test. If things worked out as he obviously expected, she would soon become an official part of the family she’d met tonight.

  Was that what she really wanted?

  Of course it was. She had reveled in Sarah’s warmth, in Alex’s acceptance and the congressman’s obvious approval. Sedona was truly a wonderland, but not so … nonsensical. This was reality. She kept trying to tell herself that.

  And she found herself looking forward to seeing Alex again. She’d never been the type of girl who attracted the “hunks.” Which was why, she supposed, she’d succumbed so easily to Mills, only to find her knight was nothing but the worst kind of knave. She’d become immune then. And, she hoped, forever. But still, Alex was disarming.

  She wasted most of the night that way, pondering imponderables until finally she fell asleep.

  Alex had breakfast with Marc at a small coffee shop in Sedona. Marc had driven in from the ranch, where he and his wife always stayed when they were in Arizona. Since they spent most of their time in Washington, Marc saw little need to keep a separate residence in town. And the ranch house was certainly large enough.

  Alex had understood the decision. Marc had always enjoyed riding and hunting, and he liked the image it presented. Family man. Rancher. He also liked the economics. Members of Congress did not have large salaries.

  “What do you think of her?” Marc asked Alex. “You’ve been with her more than any of us.”

  “I like her,” Alex said.

  “So do I,” Marc said. “But what will she do?”

  Alex shrugged. “I have no idea. I haven’t told her yet.”

  Marc gave him a questioning look.

  “It didn’t seem useful until we received the DNA test results. I didn’t want to scare her off.”

  “She spent a lot of time with Sarah.”