Kathleen O'Brien - A Daughter's Trust / For the Love of Family

“I’LL BE RIGHT BACK, Ma. I need some air.”

How many times in the past twenty years, since that first rebellion back when she was nine, had Sue made excuses like that? I need to use the restroom. I’m going to the water fountain. I’ll be right back…

As usual, they earned her the same concerned and loving look—a glance from her mom that effectively shut out all of the quiet voices floating around them in the crowded vestibule outside the church sanctuary. “You okay, baby?”

Nodding, Sue gave her mother a hug. “I’ll hurry.”

“How’s Belle? I saw you talking to her.”

“About like me. In shock. Can’t imagine life without Grandma.” Sue glanced over to where her cousin was standing with her mother and father, just as Sue was.

As it had always been.

Sam and Emily with Belle attached to Emily’s side. Luke and Jenny with Sue right next to her mother.

All that was left of the Carson family.

Some of Sue’s best childhood memories had been at Grandma Sarah’s house when the adults would be involved in whatever adults did around the table, and she and Belle could escape.

Sue from claustrophobia. Belle from her father.

“I won’t be long,” Sue whispered quickly now as one of Jenny’s longtime high school friends came up to offer condolences and ask how long she and Luke were in town.

Glad for the chance for a breather without having to leave her mom and dad unattended, Sue bolted out into the cool March air.

AS THE GROUNDSMEN lowered the cheap box into the public grave, he stood back, watching, but vowing not to feel. Not to try to understand.

If any mourners had attended the funeral, they’d since left.

Except for the lone onlooker who stood by the grave. A young black woman. A friend?

That he’d had a little sister he’d never known was not a surprise to him. The fact that his drug addict mother had been able to carry a second baby to term was a mystery. But that she’d been permitted to keep the girl—that, he could not comprehend. What kind of society, what kind of child services system, had allowed a mother already proven unfit to teach her daughter the ways of drugs and sex instead of ABC’s?

The fact that the child—a woman of sixteen—was dead, had killed herself, didn’t cause the twitch that suddenly appeared at the side of Rick Kraynick’s eye.

The fact that he cared did that.

THE BURST OF BRISK AIR didn’t alleviate Sue’s claustrophobia as she stood on the steps of St. Ignatius. She had to get away. To take in long clean breaths of ocean breeze. To hear the waves as she watched them crashing to shore and rolling out again.

Grandma Sarah had promised she’d live forever.

Grandma, the one person who’d never judged her. Not that she’d known everything about her granddaughter. Some things no one knew. Or would ever know.

Sue’s secret. Buried. Just like Grandma.

“Hey.”

Recognizing the voice, Sue glanced up. “Joe! Hi.” She’d phoned him. Left a message. She hadn’t expected to see him, even though he’d been her best friend all through high school. The only best friend she’d ever had. But high school had been a long time ago.

Before she’d emasculated him.

Now he was mostly just her boss.

Besides, he’d never met Grandma.

“Your message said one o’clock. Is it over?”

“Yeah. There’s no graveside service since her ashes are to be stored with my grandfather’s in the family vault. Mom and Uncle Sam are having a meal catered at Grandma’s house in Twin Peaks, so we’re heading there next. Would you like to come?”

“I should get back to work. I only stopped because I was in the area.”

Bosses didn’t often stop by churches where employees’ family funerals were taking place.

Old friends did.

“It would really help to have you there,” Sue said, afraid her composure was going to desert her completely.

How in the hell was she going to be able to walk into the house her grandparents had had built back in 1946, and lived in for sixty-three years, without Grandma there?

There’d never been a gathering at the house without Grandma.

Hunched in his trendy, expensive trench coat, Joe stared at her for an uncomfortable moment. And then nodded.

“I can ride over with you, if you’d like,” Sue continued. “Since you don’t know where she lives.” And then, feeling another unexpected stab through her heart, she added, “Lived.”

He didn’t meet her eyes a second time, but his nod was enough. Joe knew her. He understood.

Right now, he was the only tie to sanity she had.

“THANK YOU FOR THIS.”

Glancing at her as they pulled onto Grand View Avenue—a street with eclectic and colorful million-dollar, postwar homes, a street known for its magnificent views of the city and not for it yards, which were almost nonexistent—Joe merely shrugged.

He’d changed so much from the open-hearted boy she’d known, Sue hardly recognized him these days.

“Seems strange, after all this time, for you to meet my folks.”

In her youth, she’d kept him hidden. He’d been her prize. The one part of her life that was solely hers. Until he’d wanted more than friendship. And while she’d been able to give him love, she’d backed out of sex.

Joe grunted. As he found a spot to park in the street just beyond Grandma’s house, he added, “I won’t be able to stay long.” He didn’t crack a smile.

She wasn’t responsible for his divorce. Nor could she get him more time with the daughter she knew he adored. Those hurts had come long after she’d done her little number on him.

“Last week when I called the office, Thea said that you were with your father.” People were going into Grandma’s house. Some Sue recognized. Some she didn’t. Heart pounding, she wasn’t ready to join them.

Joe didn’t comment. She studied him, his close-cropped black hair, his crooked nose and his linebacker body.

“Is he still in town?” She might not get another chance for personal conversation with him for a while. She cared about him.

Besides, Grandma wasn’t in that house at the base of the famous Twin Peaks, wasn’t welcoming her guests.

Joe shrugged.

“How long’s it been since you’d seen him?” During their four years in high school she could only remember a brief visit from Joe’s fisherman father, who’d come down from Alaska for one of the holidays. The checks he was supposed to have sent to his mother, who was raising Joe, were only a little more frequent than his visits.

“A few years.”

“So he knows Kaitlin?” Joe’s ten-year-old daughter.

“They’ve met a time or two.”

“Was he here just to see you?”

“So he says.” The dry tone revealed more than the coldness in Joe’s eyes. “He’s been in town a couple of months.”

“Did he stay with you?”

“No.”

“Why do you think he came?”

“Money?”

“Yours?”

“I’m not aware of anyone else he knows who’d let him sponge off of them.”

“How much did he ask for?”

“None.”

“You gave it to him before he asked so he’d get out of town, right?” It was what this new, emotionally closed Joe Fraser would do. Joe Fraser, commercial real estate broker, loner.

“I’m not giving the man one red cent.”

“And he left without it?”

“No.”

Frowning, Sue tried to decipher that one. Did that mean Adam had found a way to get the money without asking? That someone else had given it to him, after all?

Or that he hadn’t left?

Her mom and dad parked their rental sedan across the street. Jenny stumbled as she got out of the car, and Luke hurried around to help her, steadying her with an arm firmly around her back. His gaze met Sue’s. He whispered something to his wife and they both smiled over. Waved.