Authors: Mariah Stewart
“Gabrielle, I’m—”
“I know who you are. You’re Ellis.” The girl studied Ellie with sea-green eyes through round wire-framed glasses. She had dark brown hair—ironically,
the same color that Ellie’d dyed hers—that came to her shoulders and she wore a College of New Jersey sweatshirt and jeans. “I’ve seen your pictures. Where should I go with this stuff?”
Ellie took one of the two boxes from Gabrielle’s hands and said, “This way.”
“You have a dog.” Gabrielle stopped on the walkway to stare down at Dune. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
“Her name is Dune.” Ellie was on the porch and was pushing the door open with her foot.
“What kind of dog is she?”
“Not sure. Some terrier mix, I think. She’s a rescue dog.”
“So you’ve done this before.” Her eyes huge behind her glasses, Gabrielle looked up at Ellie from the bottom of the steps. “The rescue thing. Good to know you’ve had experience with the homeless.”
She came up the stairs and walked into the foyer, past Ellie, whose mouth was hanging slightly open. Jesse followed with the suitcase, and whispered to Ellie on his way into the house, “I see you’ve met Gabrielle.”
“Sullen? Antisocial?” Ellie raised an eyebrow.
“Not that I could tell.”
“Maybe she didn’t like the Foresters.”
“Smart girl.” Jesse put the suitcase down.
“This is a really old house, isn’t it?” Gabrielle stood in the middle of the living room floor, taking it all in. “Our house was new. Everything was new. This place looks a little shabby.”
“I’ve only been here for a month,” Ellie told her. “I’m working on it.”
Gabrielle nodded and looked toward the stairwell. “Do I have a room?”
“You do. Third door on the right.”
“Great. Thanks.” The girl picked up the box and trotted up the steps, Dune racing her to the top, where Gabrielle paused and looked down at Jesse. “Do you think you could bring that up for me, please, Mr. Enright? It’s a little heavy and I’m just a kid.…”
An amused look on his face, Jesse carried the suitcase upstairs muttering “Yeah. Thirteen going on forty-five.”
Ellie sighed and followed him with the box in her arms.
“It’s nice that the room looks out at the woods.” Gabrielle had put the box she’d carried onto the bed and was looking out the back window. “And over there I can see the water. Is that the Chesapeake Bay? Mr. Forester said St. Dennis was on the Chesapeake Bay.”
“That’s the Bay, all right.” Jesse set the suitcase next to the box on the bedspread. “I’ll get the rest of your stuff.”
After Jesse left the room and his footsteps pounded on the stairs, Gabrielle turned to Ellie. “I know you didn’t want me to come here. It’s okay. I’ll try not to be any trouble.”
“Gabrielle … do you like Gabrielle or maybe Gabi?” Ellie asked.
Gabrielle shrugged. “Whichever you like.”
“No, it’s whatever you like.”
Again, a shrug.
Not sullen
, Ellie realized.
Resigned
.
“I prefer Ellie to Ellis.”
“Okay,” Gabrielle said. “It must feel weird to find
out you have a sister you never knew about. I’m sorry.”
“No reason for you to apologize,” Ellie told her. “It isn’t your fault. And it has to be equally hard for you.”
“No, I knew about you. I know all about you. I looked at your pictures online all the time.” She looked up at Ellie with eyes as light as Ellie’s own. “You were the one he owned up to.”
“Lucky me.” Ellie grimaced, and regretted the words the second they were out of her mouth. Too late to take them back.
“Were you?” Gabrielle sat on the edge of the mattress and asked somewhat wistfully, “Was he a good father to you? It looked like he was, in all the pictures online.”
“He was a great father,” Ellie answered honestly. “Until he wasn’t. I don’t know why he did the things he did, but they were pretty terrible.”
“I read about that, too. My mom said people get addicted to all kinds of things, and that he just got addicted to making money instead of drugs.”
“That’s about as good an explanation as any that I’ve heard.” It was an apt comparison. Her father had exhibited all the signs of addiction, had she been paying attention. “How ’bout you? What kind of a father was he for you?”
“Okay until I was about eight or nine, then he sort of lost interest,” she said matter-of-factly. “I guess I was cuter when I was little, or maybe he and my mom got along better then. And he was never, like, ‘Oh, you’re Daddy’s little girl’ or anything like that. He always supported us, though. He wanted me to go to
private school but my mom didn’t want me to go away. He was going to pay for that because he said education was important.”
“But no warm fuzzies?”
“Not so much.” Gabrielle tried to force an I-don’t-really-care attitude that didn’t match the look in her eyes. “But it’s okay. My expectations weren’t all that high.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie heard herself say.
“It’s okay. I had a really good mom.” Ellie expected Gabrielle to burst into tears, but instead, she held her chin up and met Ellie’s gaze with an acceptance that Ellie would not have expected.
“Are you hungry?” Ellie asked when she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“A little. I didn’t get lunch.”
“I don’t know what you like to eat.”
“I like pretty much everything. My mom wasn’t a real good cook,” Gabrielle said.
“I don’t know that I’m much better, but I’ll see what I have that we can whip together.” Ellie leaned against the doorjamb. “You know, you can choose another room, if you like. Why not look into all of them while I make us a something to eat?”
“Okay, thanks.”
Ellie was on the landing when Gabrielle called to her.
“You’re nicer than I thought you’d be, Ellie.”
Ellie went back to the room and poked her head in. “Did you think I wouldn’t be nice?”
“I thought you’d be mad. I didn’t think you’d want me to come.”
“Why did you think that?”
“Because Mr. Forester said you were a being a bitch about it because you didn’t answer his letter.”
“I didn’t answer his letter because I didn’t read it. I thought it was about … well, I don’t know what I thought it would be about, but I didn’t expect …”
“You didn’t expect me.”
“No, I didn’t.” Ellie decided to be completely honest.
“I’m sorry,” Gabrielle said once again.
“Don’t be sorry, kiddo. I’m not,” Ellie said, surprised to realize that she meant it.
“You’re not?”
“I’m sorry that so much has happened to you in so short a time. I’m sorry that you lost your mother and you got jerked around by Max for the last couple of weeks.” She wouldn’t be surprised if, sooner or later, Max billed her father for those hours. “I’m sorry that your father—our father,” she corrected herself, “wasn’t a better dad to you. He should have been.”
Ellie went downstairs, where Jesse was just delivering a pile of boxes.
“That’s the end of it, I think,” he told her.
“Jesse, I can’t thank you enough for getting her here.”
“Is she going to be all right?” he asked. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I think we’ll be okay after we get to know each other a little. I can’t help but feel sorry for her. She seems like a really nice kid who deserves better than to be just one more person who got screwed over by Clifford Chapman.”
“Agreed.” Jesse let himself out the front door. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Will do,” she told him.
Ellie went into the kitchen and tried to make sense of the entire day, which had gone from fabulous to crazy in practically no time at all. She’d planned on spending much of this day just basking in what remained of the glow of her night with Cameron. Instead, she was pushed once again into the harsh light that seemed to accompany everything connected with her father these days.
She heard Gabrielle moving upstairs, the floorboards squeaking as she moved from one room to the next, trying to decide which one she wanted. Ellie hadn’t had time to figure out how she felt about this hitherto unknown half sister of hers. She seemed like a genuinely sweet girl, one who’d been handed a particularly nasty hand. How things were going to play out, Ellie couldn’t even begin to guess.
One thing she did know was that what her father had done to her didn’t hold a candle to what he’d done to Gabrielle.
Ellie made open-faced tuna sandwiches since she and Cam had used most of what little bread she had for toast earlier. She and Gabi—as Gabrielle announced she really did prefer—ate in the kitchen, trying to talk past the strangeness.
“Did you decide on a room?” Ellie asked.
“I think I like the back room on the left side of the hall best. Would it be okay if I moved my stuff into there?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” Gabi looked down. “Why does the floor look like that?”
“The old linoleum was hideous, so I tore it up. The wood hasn’t been sanded yet.”
Gabi pointed to the wall Cam and Ellie had worked on the night before.
“Nice cutwork around the doorway,” she told Ellie. “Did you do that?”
“No, my friend did. And what do you know about cutwork?”
“I know that you paint with a brush around the molding and then you finish the rest of the wall with a roller. My mom always did all our paint and stuff.” Gabi took a bite of her sandwich. “Who’s your friend? A boyfriend?”
Ellie thought about how to categorize her relationship with Cameron. “Sort of.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cameron.”
“That’s a cool name. There was a boy in my old school named Cameron. He was a jerk but at least he had a cool name.” She took a drink of water to wash down the tuna and bread. “Where am I going to go to school?”
“I don’t know where the school is. I’ll have to ask someone.”
“Are there any kids on this street, you know, my age?” Gabi asked.
“I don’t think so. Most of the houses along here belong to summer people, so they’re empty this time of the year. There’s an older couple who live across the street, and a few young families closer to Charles Street, but I haven’t seen anyone your age. I’m sure there are lots of kids in town, though. That’s something else I can ask around about.”
“Never mind. I guess I’ll meet kids when I go to school.” She took another bite and chewed it slowly. “Will that be on Monday?”
“Do you want to go on Monday?”
Gabi nodded. “I love school. I’m very smart and I get very good grades. I’m a pretty good athlete, too.”
“What sports do you play?”
“I play field hockey and lacrosse at school and I run track with the girls’ club.”
“The same sports I played,” Ellie noted, and Gabi beamed at this bit of news.
“So, we’ll do our best to get you to where you need to go on Monday.” Ellie thought for a moment. “I think we’ll need to get your records from your last school, though.”
“I think Mr. Enright had all that stuff. Mr. Forester had a big folder that he gave to Mr. Enright. I think it’s in that box you took upstairs.”
“We’ll look for it.” Ellie grew thoughtful. “And I probably need something to show that I’m your guardian.”
“Is that going to be okay with you?” Gabi’s face was suddenly very serious.
“I think it’s going to be fine.”
“ ’Cause, you know, I heard foster care wasn’t all that bad if you got a nice family.” Gabi straightened her back. Her attempt to look brave was obvious.
“We’re taking the whole foster thing off the table,” Ellie told her.
“Good. I’d rather stay here.” Gabi drained her glass of water to hide her relieved sigh. “Thanks for making lunch, Ellie. Could I take Dune out for a walk?”
“Sure. She’ll like that. Her leash is in the back hall, near the door.”
Ellie moved their dishes to the counter and rinsed them off, then went to the front door. She was about to open it and call to Gabi to suggest that she might like to walk along the beach, when she saw Cam’s pickup in the driveway.
“Hi,” she heard Gabi’s voice. “Are you the sort-of boyfriend?”
Cam stopped on the path to stare at the girl before smiling. “Yeah. Sort of. Who are you?”
“I’m Ellie’s sister, Gabi.”
“Since when does Ellie have a sister?”
Gabi pointed to Ellie, who stood in the doorway.
“I think you’d better ask her.…”
U
ntil he looked up and saw the stricken look on Ellie’s face, Cameron thought the girl was just kidding around. He was pretty sure that Ellie was Lynley’s only child, which left Clifford Chapman suspect. Would Cam be surprised that Chapman had fooled around on Lynley? Would a man who would cheat so many people out of their life savings have qualms about cheating on his wife? Not likely.
Cam walked up the front steps to where Ellie stood, leaned against the side of the house, and asked, “So, what’s new?”
“I tried to call you a couple of times.” Ellie seemed to be looking everywhere except at Cameron.
“I forgot to charge my phone.” He watched her face. She looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. “My sister ended up having a few of her friends help her move. She really didn’t need me, so I decided to come back and spend the day with my sort-of girlfriend.”
Ellie held the door open for him, a grim look in her eyes. She looked past him to where the girl and the dog stood in the middle of the lawn.
“It’s okay, Gabi,” Ellie called to her. “You can go on down to the beach. Just keep an eye on the sky. It looks like it might rain.”
Gabi nodded and jogged off toward the beach with Dune. Ellie closed the door behind her.
“I could use a cup of coffee,” Cam told her, sensing that Ellie was at loose ends.
“Okay.” She followed him down the hall to the kitchen.
She busied herself at the sink—emptying out the remains of that morning’s coffee, rinsing out the pot and the basket, measuring water, measuring coffee. Cam could tell by her expression that she was conflicted and trying to decide what to say.
“Take your time, Ellie,” he said softly.
She nodded without looking at him. When the coffee was finished percolating, she poured a cup for him and brought it to the table, where he sat, waiting for her to join him.