A Father's Quest (3 page)

Time for honesty. “I learned from watching you fall in love with Cade.”

“Really? Like what?”

“I decided a real relationship—the kind that’s going to last—has to be built on trust. When you cut that rope on the climbing tower and fell into Cade’s arms, you trusted him to catch you.”

Jessie made a face. “Sorta. I mean, it’s not like I had a lot of choices at the time. But, you’re right, he did catch me and I do trust him.”

“What I’m saying is I will never be able to find that around here because nobody in this town knows who I really am.”
Including me.

Remy could tell by the widening of Jessie’s eyes that she understood. “Wow. That’s insightful, Rem. So, what does that mean, exactly? You’re moving?”

“Maybe. Probably. All I know for sure is I’m done pretending. My whole life has been one big pretense.”

“No. I don’t agree.”

“Yes, it has. I pretended not to be angry with Mama for what she did to me and Jonas. I was the good girl in the family, for heaven’s sake. The freakin’ peacemaker.” It was hard for her to even think the word
peacemaker
without contempt. Who wanted to use other people’s problems to deny the existence of their own? “A good girl wouldn’t hate her mother for doing what she thought was best for her daughter, right?”

“You hated Mama, too?” Jessie’s voice was so quiet Remy almost didn’t hear the question.

“Why do you think I went to Nashville with you? I was so mad I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her, let alone live in her house. But I couldn’t admit that out loud.”

Jessie let out a low whistle. “I knew you were upset, but I thought you were pissed off at Jonas. The way he went to Europe instead of sticking around to make sure you were okay.”

It had been a double whammy of hurt. First, her mother broke up Remy and Jonas; then, Jonas broke Remy’s heart by running away as if she were contemptible—toxic—because she was her mother’s daughter.

Reinforcing, she realized later, the deep inner self-doubt she’d always harbored.

“What Mama told us that night confirmed something I’d always suspected.”

“What?” Despite her obvious reluctance, Jessie rose and approached the balcony—a clear sign she wouldn’t abandon this discussion.

“That our family isn’t normal. Mama was a slut. And we’re bastards. Not only that, but she admitted to depriving of us of a chance to know our father. All those years she pretended he was dead, he wasn’t. We could have had a relationship with him. But by the time she told us, he was gone. That’s pretty damn low, wouldn’t you say?”

“But you came home again, after Nashville.”

“I wanted to go to college, and Mama offered to let me live here free of charge while I went to school. And she apologized for everything, tried to explain and justify her choices.” She shrugged. “You know how persuasive she could be. And you were in California by then, so there went my backbone.”

“The brains and the brawn,” Jessie said wistfully. “Isn’t that what it said under our yearbook pictures?”

Remy was still thinking about her mother, the choices Mama made and how they affected her daughters. “Don’t you ever wonder what our lives would have been like if we’d had a real father—not a string of Mama’s boy friends, who often happened to be someone else’s dad?”

“Not really. Did you talk to Mom about this when you sat with her at the hospital?”

Remy shook her head. “It was too late by then. I didn’t want her to feel bad.”

Jessie took a step closer and touched Remy’s shoulder in a supportive way. “See? You can’t help yourself, Rem. You’re nice. You care about people. That’s why you tried to help Mama’s clients by telling them about your dreams.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m done with all of that. I’ve decided to be more like you.”

Jessie made a skeptical sound. “Me?”

“Yes. You do what you want and to hell with what people think. When we were little, everybody cut you slack because of your burns, but you know as well as I do that you had a chip on your shoulder before you were injured. I probably tried a little too hard to be easygoing to make up for your attitude.”

Jessie looked aghast. “You were sweet because I wasn’t? Really? That’s wild. Because I actually used to resent you for being so nice. I should have known you weren’t as perfect as you pretended to be. After all—” she winked “—you’re my twin.”

Remy smiled. She felt better after getting some of her pent-up feelings off her chest. She still didn’t have a plan, per se, but telling Jessie about her intentions was a big first step. She’d have to explain her position to their three older sisters at some point.

Or, not. Maybe she’d take a page from the Jessie Bouchard playbook and act first, explain later.

Jessie hobbled into the room and resumed her seated position to rest her ankle. “So, what does this epiphany mean exactly? Are you going to sell Mama’s house and move? I’d love to have you closer to me.”

Remy followed her inside but left the doors open. “We can’t sell it. The market is too depressed. Maybe I’ll rent it out. First I have to finish fixing it up.” She nodded toward her walls, which she’d painted a brilliant shade of ruby. In a way, choosing such a bold color—something her mother would not have chosen—had been Remy’s first act of rebellion.

“But, don’t worry. Whatever I decide, I’ll keep you informed,” she said. “We do own this place together.”

Their mother had been so proud to be able to give her daughters a tangible legacy. As she rightly should. She’d started her own hair salon, expanded to include two other locations, paid off this house and raised five daughters almost entirely on her own. Whatever her faults—and there were many—Marlene had provided financially for her children.

Remy and Jessie talked about some much lighter topics for a few minutes longer until a loud, insistent barking interrupted.

“Is that my dog?” Jessie asked, returning to the balcony.

Beau, Jessie’s foundling, was ordinarily calm and quiet. The mature Catahoula hound rarely made a sound.

She leaned past Remy to check out the side yard where the dog was able to run free.

“Hey, boy, what are you upset about?”

The leggy tricolor mutt paced along the hedge.

Jessie frowned. “I thought it might be Cade and Shiloh, but there’s no sign of a big orange truck in the drive. Only Yota.”

Remy’s gaze was drawn to the nose of a shiny black car parked across the street. She couldn’t identify the make or model because the hedge blocked her view, but the pristine paint job sparkled in the morning light.

“There’s someone in the car across the street.”

Jessie tensed visibly. A predictable reaction given the fact she’d recently faced down a hit man who had been causing her grief. “Who?”

“I don’t know. The hedge is in the way. But I’m guessing your dog can sense that someone’s there.”

“Do you want me to go check this out? Maybe you have a stalker of your own.”

Remy put a hand on her sister’s arm. “Chill, Kung Fu Panda. I’ll finish dressing and put on some makeup, then meet you downstairs. Once I’m presentable, we can take a stroll and check out the car—together.”

Jessie rolled her eyes. “Get
presentable
and
take a stroll
. My God, you do sound like Mama.”

Remy waited for Jessie to go inside before she closed and locked the French doors. “You know, Jess, despite comments like that, I’m going to miss you. I’ve really enjoyed these past few weeks together.”

“Me, too. It was almost like the old days in Nashville.”

They’d worked crappy jobs to fund their living expenses while they played heartfelt songs about love and loss—and fire—in out-of-the-way joints. Everyone said that was what you had to do to get big. But apparently their out-of-the-way joints were never frequented by scouts for the legitimate record labels. They lasted three years and had some wonderful memories between them, but no recording contract.

“Except for the waiting-tables part,” Remy returned with a smile. “You really, really hated that.”

“True. I was easily the worst waitress on the planet. Thank God you made enough in tips for both of us.” Jessie laughed but turned serious almost immediately. “Remy, I wish you didn’t think you had to change to make your life better. I love you just the way you are. I mean that.”

Remy could tell her sister was speaking from the heart. She gave her a hug then picked up her cosmetic bag and started toward the door. “Don’t worry. My psychology professor liked to say that personality was formed in the womb. Knowing me, I probably ushered the way for you to exit first. ‘Please, Jessie, be my guest. Yell extra loud and make a big fuss, then I’ll come out nice and quiet so everyone likes me best.’”

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Remy hadn’t planned for quite that much frankness, but she didn’t retract the comment, either.

Jessie threw back her head and laughed. “You know, you’re probably right. That is too funny. And a little sad, but I’m not going to think about what I can’t change.” She grabbed Remy’s empty cup on her way to the door. “Hey, I meant to ask. I found Mama’s glass cake plate in the cupboard. You know I can’t bake for squat, but I thought I might take it if you don’t care. It reminds me of her. In a good way.”

“It’s yours. Take it.”

Jessie looked at her a moment, then grinned. “Thanks. You’re a nice person, Remy. Whatever big changes you decide to make, try not to lose that part of your personality.”

Remy didn’t reply. Instead, she walked into the bathroom and closed the door. She felt like a traveler at a giant crossroads. Seeing her sister in love—really, truly, head-over-heels in love with Cade—had been the tipping point for Remy. Their completeness made her realize she wanted a full life, not the half-life she’d allowed herself. Not the kind their mother had lived, always holding back a part of her heart because the one love of her life left, never to return.

Remy knew how difficult it was to change old patterns. Her teacher had called this an addiction to the familiar. If Remy didn’t initiate a change, she might very easily become her mother—filling up the hours of her day with other people’s worries and drama and filling her nights with unavailable men who conveniently made themselves available to take the place of the only man she ever loved.

Birdie. His nickname for his seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Brigitte Leann Galloway.

He glanced at the small, colorful frame attached to his dash. A treasure from her preschool days, adorned with globs of primary paint and bursts of purple glitter, it was one of the most tangible reminders he had of his creative, delightfully imaginative, gifted child.

“Purple is your special color, Daddy. I see it when I close my eyes and think of you,” she’d told him at the time.

Although the frame was several years old, the photo it held was the most current he had. He’d cropped and printed it from an email Cheryl, his ex-wife, had sent him in Iraq. The pixel quality wasn’t great, but the image had the power to bring him to the brink of tears. His daughter’s wide smile showed an age-appropriate mix of baby teeth, recently lost gaps in the gum line and a couple of new, gigantic-looking permanent teeth.

The picture was his most valued possession at the moment. It was the last one he had of the little girl who, along with her mother, had vanished five months earlier.

He shifted uneasily. The heat was starting to build inside the car, despite the fact he had all the windows lowered. He was killing time, waiting for what his mother would have called a “decent” hour before knocking on the door of the house across the street.

His mother had always preached good manners and etiquette while Jonas was growing up. He knew she would have been appalled if he went visiting before nine in the morning. Bad enough he was showing up unannounced.

“Manners say a lot about a person, Jonas,” his mother often said. “And the person who raised him.”

The person who raised him—nearly single-handedly, Jonas acknowledged—was Charlotte Gainsford Galloway of the Mobile Gainsfords. Mother had tacked on that qualifier until the day he asked why he’d never met any of the Mobile Gainsfords. Tearfully, she’d explained that her parents had disowned her when she ran away with his father—a movie-star handsome, smooth-talking car salesman—instead of going to college, as planned. In the years that followed, she made numerous attempts to reestablish contact with family members, but after her parents died, she lost touch with her siblings completely.

Jonas had thought about tracking down her older brother and baby sister using the internet, but it hardly seemed worth the effort at this point. His mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s or early onset dementia. Two diagnoses that seemed to mean the same thing—his mother’s cognitive, thinking functions were sporadic, at best, and on the decline. In a way, she was as lost to him as he feared his baby girl might become if he didn’t locate Birdie soon.

He’d never felt more alone and helpless. Well, except for that one time, when he was eight.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall against the headrest. The memory remained one of the most vivid of his childhood. Not surprising, he imagined, given he’d nearly died.

His parents were still married at the time, but his father was gone a lot. When Dad was around, the tension between his parents was tangible; Jonas would lie in bed at night with a pillow over his head to block the sound of their fights. Not gentle arguments befitting his society-conscious mother, but loud, skillet-throwing skirmishes that made him want to run away.

So, one day, he did.

He rose before dawn, made himself a peanut butter sandwich and headed into the woods behind his house. He’d been exploring the area the week before with some friends from school. Sorta friends. Boys Jonas wanted to be his friends. Two were older. They knew everything, including the location of an old well that had gotten covered up and forgotten near an abandoned farm that Jonas’s mother had forbidden him to go near.

They’d tossed rocks at the rotten boards until one cracked in half, then they’d dared the youngest of the group—Jonas—to make a wish and drop a quarter into the abyss.

He’d been too afraid to accept the challenge and had run home. Naturally, the other boys had teased him mercilessly the next day. So, his first stop on the road to his new life would be the well—to prove that he was brave enough to go on.

He even knew exactly what he’d drop into the well when he made his wish—a small oval St. Christopher medal that belonged to his father. Jonas had carefully removed the medallion from the cheap chain—converted dog tags from last year’s G.I. Joe Halloween costume—then knelt on the soft, moist ground near the yawn of an opening. He’d had to stretch out a long way because the medal was so small—no bigger than some of the fishing lures Jonas had seen in the hardware store. He’d leaned closer, straining to hear a splash, but unfortunately, that extra bit of weight on the well opening had proved too much for the rotted timbers.

He didn’t remember falling. He didn’t remember hitting bottom, but he could still recall with surprising clarity waking up in a black pit with a small uneven oval of blue above him and a wet, sandy, dead-leaf-lined well floor below him.

The walls were slick with moisture. Roots stuck out in places, but none were low enough for him to reach. He now had a new definition of
alone.

It took rescuers twenty-nine hours to find him. He’d later learned that most of that time was spent dealing with his hysterical mother and organizing a search party. The actual finding was made simple once the men in charge took heed of a local beautician who insisted they listen to her daughter. A child Jonas’s age.

“He’s at the bottom of a well,” Remy Bouchard was reputed to have said.

Jonas looked at the house on the corner lot across from where he was parked.

He hadn’t known Remy at the time he fell in the well. They were in the same grade but had different teachers. He’d seen her on the playground, but one of his friends— Tommy Fergen, he thought—told him she was queer in the head and could put a hex on you if you looked at her funny. Jonas had kept his distance.

He didn’t meet her the day of the rescue, either. But his mother had dragged him to the Bouchards’—a different house, not this place—to thank them. Remy wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. She was tiny, for one thing. With a halo of white-blond hair that looked too perfect to be real. And she still had her baby teeth. He remembered that strange fact way too clearly.

He remembered a lot about that day because it was the day he fell in love with Remy Bouchard. He never told anyone, of course. He never acted on his feelings until that night in high school when they bumped into each other at a hayride and wound up holding hands.

They’d done more than that eventually. They’d kissed until their lips were puffy and numb. They’d explored each other’s body with joyful curiosity and a certain amount of pride. And, then, mere days away from their planned “first time” date, Remy’s mother dropped the bomb of a lifetime in their laps, changing everything.

Jonas’s mother had unwittingly provided the ultimate escape from the nightmare he’d been forbidden to tell her about. As a graduation gift she took him on a whirlwind tour of Europe. Upon his return, he did the responsible thing. Instead of going after Remy, who had moved to Nashville with her sister, he joined the National Guard to help pay for college.

He hadn’t seen her since that fateful day. How many years? Fifteen? He’d never attended any of their class reunions. The only person he would have wanted to see was the one person he had no business in the world seeing.

The same person he was now about to beg for help.

He glanced at his watch. It was time.

He got out of the car and marched across the street, grateful for the breeze that touched the dampness across his back, producing an odd chill. He plucked at the fabric of his black, short-sleeve cotton shirt and rolled his shoulders, collecting himself. He looked down at his knee-length shorts and rugged, waterproof sandals.

Did he look like a tourist? Probably, but readapting to Louisiana humidity after his stay in a desert was taking time. Plus, he was on leave from his job. His suit and ties were retired until he found Birdie.

He knocked on the old-fashioned wood screen door. The sound echoed through the home’s entry and elicited an excited barking from the rear of the house. The dog he’d heard earlier when he first pulled up, he assumed.

There were voices—including a loud, “Quiet, Beau”—coming from what he supposed was the kitchen. He’d been in homes like this one on the job. Insurance adjusters saw everything imaginable in the course of a day—even outright stupidity. He’d also been attacked at least twice by dogs that should have known better, since he was a huge improvement over their owners.

The buzz of female chatter made its way down the corridor, followed by footsteps. Two women. He recognized them both immediately. Remy and Jessie. As different as twins could be, but still alike in so many ways.

The moment they reached the openness of the entry and had a good look at him they froze. Jessie threw an arm across her sister’s chest, like a mother trying to keep her child from flying forward in a car coming to a stop too fast.

Remy tilted her head and blinked, as if not quite believing her eyes. “Jonas? Jonas Galloway?”

“Yep. It’s me. How are you doing, Remy? Jessie?” He shuffled his feet, wishing he’d used the time in the car to prepare what he needed to say. “I’m sorry to bother you so early on a Saturday. Would you happen to have a few minutes for an old friend?”

Jessie stepped forward, crossing her arms. “An old friend?” she repeated. “Jonas Galloway, you’re the reason my sister is all alone and never married. You can’t sashay back into her life like nothing happened.”

The revelation was both painful and enlightening. He had no idea what to say to that.

Remy did. She shoved her sister aside with a force that seemed to surprise them both. Jessie staggered slightly. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. Where the heck is Cade with your moving van? I swear, girl.” She shook her head.

Amazingly, her hair was still long, still blond and still gorgeous, Jonas couldn’t help noticing when she opened the door for him.

“Pretend you didn’t hear that, Jonas. I’m not the loser my sister has made me out to be, and you did not ruin my life. Just to be clear.”

Jessie’s mouth opened and closed a few times but whatever she’d hoped to offer in her own defense was put on hold by the sound of a truck pulling into the driveway.

“They’re back,” she exclaimed, grinning as she headed for the door. He noticed she had an odd gait and he realized her ankle was wrapped. Even so, she managed a good speed and Jonas had no choice but to step inside or be mowed over—gimpy foot or no gimpy foot.

“Hi, you two,” she called, hobbling toward the moving van, where a man and teenage girl waited. “You took long enough.”

“Jessie’s married?”

Remy shook her head. “Not yet. She and Cade have to decide a few details, but I think everything will work out great in the end.”

“And if anyone would know, it would be you, right? You’re the Dream Girl of Baylorville, Louisiana. Aren’t you?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she shouted, clamping her hands to her hips, which made the flowing material of her dress dance around her knees. “See? This is exactly what Jessie and I were just talking about. Once you get a reputation in a small town, it is impossible to change people’s minds.”

She pivoted on one heel and stomped to the edge of the porch. She leaned over the railing, as if addressing the entire town, and yelled at the top of her voice, “I am not a psychic.”

The hem of her skirt came up, revealing the very legs he’d never stopped dreaming about. Still as gorgeous as they had been fifteen years ago. He couldn’t help but look. And remember. Until she spun around and caught him staring.

Her eyes narrowed and she advanced on him with the sort of intensity he’d witnessed in combat. If looks could kill…

A second later, the realization struck him that he was turned on. Good grief. His mind had snapped. Not only was he here on a mission of life and death, he wasn’t over her. He still wanted her.

Remy.

His goddamned sister.