Authors: Mariah Stewart
J
ESSE
met Ellie at the door, his face grim.
“What’s happened?” Dread washed over her again, and she knew this had nothing to do with code violations.
“You need to sit down.” Jesse led her into his office and closed the door, even though Violet Finneran had the day off and no other clients were in sight. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you.…”
“Tell me what?” Her legs shaking, Ellie sank into the first chair inside the door. “Just say it.”
“I got a phone call last night around nine thirty from your father’s personal attorney.”
“Max Forester?” Ellie frowned. “What was so important that he had to call you on Thanksgiving night? What did he want that couldn’t have waited until this morning?”
“He wanted to talk about your sister.”
“What sister? I don’t have a sister.”
“Apparently you do.”
“You’re not making any sense.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “I’m an only child.”
“Ellie … there’s just no other way to say this.”
Jesse sat in the chair next to her and turned it to face hers. “Your father began an affair with a woman in New Jersey about sixteen years ago. They had a child together.”
“That’s preposterous. The feds went over every second of his life for the past thirty years. If there’d been another woman there, they’d have found her and everyone would have known about it a year ago.”
“Does the name Marilyn Hansen ring any bells?”
“No. I’ve never heard it before. She’s the one?”
Jesse nodded.
“That’s crazy talk,” Ellie scoffed. “Oh, wait. Let me guess. She’s looking to get some sort of payoff from him by claiming that a child of hers is his. Ms. Hansen’s obviously way behind in her reading. Every newspaper and magazine in the country ran the stories of how everything he owned—everything
I
owned—was turned over to the FBI and the SEC to sell to repay his victims. Surely Max told her that.”
“I don’t know what Max told her but it hardly matters now, since she was killed in a car accident two weeks ago.”
“This woman’s dead?”
“She’s dead, but her daughter is alive.”
“Wait a minute, this supposed daughter—”
“Not supposed. There was a paternity test years ago. She’s definitely Clifford Chapman’s daughter. He acknowledged her a long time ago. That’s not in dispute, Ellie. I had Max fax over all the papers this morning. Her birth certificate, the results of the DNA testing, copies of the mother’s bank account.”
“He was supporting her?”
“Evidently quite well.”
“How did he manage to hide that during the investigation?”
“Cash payments every month to her mother.” Jesse leaned back in his chair. “Which I’m assuming stopped once the investigation began.”
“They had to have shown up somewhere,” Ellie insisted.
“Your father’s business brought in a ridiculous amount of money. You of all people must know that.”
“Yes, but I made a lot of money working for him and I had to account for all of it.”
“I know, but you’re honest, and he wasn’t. It appears that he managed to hide a lot over the years.”
“So what does this girl have to do with me?”
“Put bluntly, your father is asking that you take her in.”
“Take her in? What does that mean, take her in?”
“Her mother has no family and her father is in prison. Clifford has asked that you agree to become her legal guardian.”
“You mean, have her live with me?” She choked back a laugh. “Is he delusional?”
“She’s been staying with the Foresters but that was supposed to be temporary, and quite frankly, they don’t want her. They’re turning her over to the state to put her into foster care on Monday if she has nowhere else to go. And other than you, there is no one, no place, for her to go.”
“Well, she’s not coming here, either.” Ellie got up and began to pace. “My father has colossal nerve to even think of asking me to raise his … his child.”
She slammed a hand on the back of the chair she’d been sitting in.
“What is wrong with that man, anyway?”
Jesse sat back, apparently willing to let Ellie blow off as much of her anger as she needed to.
“And who is this girl? How old is she?”
“She’s thirteen.” He got up and reached for a file on his desk. “Her name is—”
“Don’t tell me her name. Don’t tell me anything about her. I don’t want to know. He’s crazy if he thinks for one minute that I’d …”
Jesse closed the file and Ellie walked into the hall, paced some more, then came back into the office.
“Did you speak with my father directly?”
“No, only Max. He said that both he and your father had tried to contact you by mail but you hadn’t responded.”
Ellie thought about the letters she’d received—two from her father and one from Max’s law firm—and tossed away. She groaned and sat for a few seconds, got up, paced once more, then sat again.
“Where is this girl now?” she asked.
“She’s with Max and his family, but they’re not willing to keep her. Actually, they’re supposed to be leaving on a cruise tomorrow and want her gone today. Max sounded extremely put out that you hadn’t contacted him to make arrangements for her, so that he and his family had to share their Thanksgiving Day with her.” Jesse paused, then asked, “Is Max as big a jerk as I make him sound?”
“Bigger,” she told him. “You have no idea.”
“Oh, I have some idea. He said having her at dinner yesterday put a damper on their family’s holiday. That she was sullen and antisocial.”
“Oh, gee. She was sullen? Really?” Ellie snorted,
her sense of fair play tweaked. “Ya think it might have had something to do with the fact that her mother’s dead, her father’s in prison, and her choice is between foster care or a half sister she’s never met? Can’t imagine why she wasn’t in more of a party mood.”
“That was pretty much my reaction, too. It can’t be easy for this kid.”
“Don’t make me feel sorry for her.” Ellie put both hands over her face and groaned. “Jesse, I don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this.”
“I understand. I don’t know how I’d feel in your shoes. I don’t know what I’d do.”
Ellie paced a little more and wished she could turn the clock back to early this morning when she had nothing on her mind except Cameron and memories of their night together. She hadn’t had time to process it—needed time to process it—but here she was, being asked to decide the fate of a hitherto unknown girl. Her sister.
Her little sister who just lost her mother and probably didn’t have much of a relationship with her father and was probably scared shitless about what was going to happen to her.
“All right.” She sighed. “What’s her name?”
“Gabrielle. She’s in ninth grade and she—”
“I need to think.”
“Want some coffee while you do?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
Ellie sat back in her chair and closed her eyes. She did not want to be responsible for her father’s love child. She didn’t know anything about teenage girls
other than that she’d been one once. She had no idea where she’d go or what she’d be doing once her time in St. Dennis was over. How could she take on the responsibility of someone else? A stranger? A kid, for God’s sake. Keeping Dune had been a big step for her.
No, she did not want this girl—this half sister—to come to St. Dennis. No. No, no, no.
She picked up the file that Jesse had left on his desk and opened it. Inside were the faxed letters from Max on the letterhead of Forester, Fox and Oxenhauer, the DNA report, and the birth certificate of Gabrielle Amelia Hanson naming Marilyn Jean Hanson as her mother and Clifford Andrew Chapman as her father.
Amelia was Ellie’s paternal grandmother’s name.
Nice move on Marilyn’s part
.
The last item in the file was a photocopy of a photograph of a young girl with dark bangs that fell like fringe over her forehead almost to her eyes. She wore a floppy hat and sunglasses and a big smile. Her cheeks hadn’t yet lost their childhood roundness and her face still held a semblance of innocence. Ellie sat and held the picture in front of her.
She didn’t know this girl, didn’t want to. She didn’t want to share her house with Gabrielle Hansen—or did she go by Chapman? She didn’t want this girl’s problems to become her own. Ellie was just starting to come to terms with her past and still had no idea what the future held. Did she really need a teenager at this stage of her life? What did she know about raising a child?
But what she did know about the foster care system in this country could fill volumes.
Three years ago she’d done some free PR for a private
organization that was promoting adoption of kids who were caught in the system through no fault of their own. She’d wept when she watched the film they produced, showing how kids got sucked into foster care and how so few ever got out. How, as they grew older and older, they became less and less adoptable. How they were kicked out of the system at eighteen and how many of them disappeared into the vortex of street life.
Could she really sentence a young girl—her own sister, for crying out loud—to such a future?
On the other hand, what about
her
life, the life she was trying to build for herself?
Crap.
Jesse returned to the office, a mug of coffee on a tray along with sweetener and a container of skim milk.
“We’re out of half-and-half,” he apologized, and held up the small carton of milk. “This is the best I could do in a pinch.”
“It’s fine, thanks, Jesse.” Preoccupied, Ellie fixed her coffee and sipped without tasting.
“Why don’t you go home, take a few hours to think things over?” Jesse suggested.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ve already made up my mind. I really don’t want to do this, Jesse.”
“I totally understand. I’ll contact Max this morning and tell him to make the arrangements with child services.”
“No. To bring her to St. Dennis.”
“I thought you just said you didn’t want to take her.”
“I don’t. I don’t know her, and for all we know, she really is a sullen, antisocial little brat and I’ll be at my wits’ end before the weekend is over and I’ll wish I’d told my father to go screw himself. But I know that foster care can be really, really rough. I’ve never heard a good thing about it. I can’t in good conscience send this kid into that without at least giving her a chance. What’s happened to her to turn her life inside out isn’t her fault and it isn’t fair,” she told him, “and I know all about that.”
She stood. “So go ahead, call Max and tell him I said yes. Get whatever paperwork we’ll need. But tell him I want her driven down here in a hired car with all her things at his expense. He can afford it. After all the money my father paid him over the years, he can at least have the decency to do better than a bus ticket.”
“Do you want to talk to him yourself? Make the arrangements …?”
“No. I don’t want to talk to him. God forbid I should sound sullen or distracted. I might ruin his cruise.”
It was almost four in the afternoon when Jesse’s SUV pulled up in front of Ellie’s house. Max had the girl and everything she owned dropped off at Jesse’s law office, either because he wanted to annoy Jesse or because he felt it lent some greater legality to the situation.
To ease her nerves, Ellie had taken Dune on a long walk, then she’d called Carly.
“Hey, I was just thinking about calling you to see
how Thanksgiving dinner—” Carly began when she answered Ellie’s call.
“You’re not going to believe this. My father had an affair. He had a mistress in New Jersey and they had a child. A girl. She’s thirteen. Gabrielle. Marilyn—that’s the mother—my father’s mistress—she died, and my father wanted me to—”
“Whoa! Back up! You’re babbling. Slow down and start over from ‘My father had an affair.’ ”
“He did. It started sixteen years ago. You realize that was even before my mother was sick, right? Bastard. I never thought he’d cheat on her. I thought he loved her and that they were happy together. I thought that—”
“Excuse me, but at the risk of sounding rude, that part isn’t relevant at the moment. Go back to the part about him having a child with this woman. How did you find out?”
“My dad’s attorney called Jesse Enright when he couldn’t get in touch with me. He’d sent me a letter—and my dad wrote to me as well—but I didn’t read any of the letters. I just felt so over that entire mess, I didn’t want to hear from my father or anyone else connected with all that. So I threw the envelopes away, thinking they were just some blah-blah-I’m-so-sorry stuff.”
“Jesse is your lawyer there, right? Engaged to the cupcake queen?”
“Right. Anyway, Max—my dad’s personal lawyer, not to be confused with his criminal lawyer—called Jesse because the girl—Gabrielle—had been staying with his family since the funeral and they wanted her out.”
Ellie related her conversation with Jesse.
“Wow. That’s gotta hurt.” Carly said when Ellie finished filling her in on the details. “So what happens now?”
“Now I wait for her to show up here this afternoon. Car, tell me the truth. Am I nuts? What if we hate each other? What if she hates me? What if she’s obnoxious and takes drugs and—”
“Stop it. Stop it now. You’re giving me a headache,” Carly protested. “Look, you’ve made the decision to give her a chance; now do it.”
Ellie paused. “You’re right. I need to be rational.”
“Just take a deep breath and don’t imagine the situation will be worse than it will be. She could be a perfectly nice kid.” Carly paused. “Or she could be demon spawn. Either way, you won’t know until she gets there.”
Ellie heard the car doors slam and looked out the window to see Jesse and a slim girl almost as tall as she standing behind it, the hatch open. Jesse placed several items in the girl’s arms before sliding a suitcase onto the ground.
“Which is now. I’ll call you back.…” Ellie disconnected the call and put the phone in her pocket.
“Here we go, Dune,” Ellie said to the dog, who was standing on her hind legs to look, too. “Wish all of us luck.…”
Ellie opened the front door and went outside, meeting the girl halfway up the drive.