Kaitlyn Rice - The Third Daughter's Wish

When Brenda returned to the living room to offer Rick a glass of water and a handful of pills, he grinned wryly at Josie’s concerned gaze. “When you get to be my age, the pharmacist has to help keep the old heart ticking.”

Heart ticking. Could this problem be seizure related? And he’d been driving. Did that mean anything?

Josie hmmmed her concern, hoping to draw explanations.

“I was always strong as an ox,” he said. “Years of eating fried bologna and kraut dogs gave me a heart attack coupla years ago. Now I live on pills and greens.”

It didn’t sound as if he had a seizure disorder, but she couldn’t be certain without asking specifically. Josie watched her father swallow the pills and return the glass to Brenda, and a new worry invaded her thoughts. What if the shock of learning her identity canceled the effects of those pills? What if the man died here and now? From a seizure. A heart attack. Shock.

“Would you drink some coffee or iced tea?” Brenda asked Josie on her way to the kitchen.

“No, thanks.” Josie wished she could follow Brenda and escape out the back door. Her father had just said he’d always been as strong as an ox. He drove a truck. If he’d suffered from epilepsy or some other disorder, it must be well under control.

Josie’s sister and brother-in-law would work until Lilly’s condition was controlled or extinguished. Why disturb an old man’s contented life? Perhaps Gabe and her sisters were right.

“How are they?” Rick asked, causing Josie to jump. He leaned forward on the sofa, as if eager to hear the answer.

This was her opening. Ella died seven years ago, but her children are great, she might tell him. Then, Enjoy your life. And Goodbye.

“They are fine,” she said. “More than fine, actually. They are amazing people.”

“Are they?” He peered into Josie’s eyes, nodding slowly. “Brenda’s cousin read about Ella’s passing in the Kansas City paper several years ago. I thought about contacting the children then, but figured I was too late.”

“You did?”

He sat back in the chair, his hand trembling when he lifted it to remove his glasses. As he directed his grimace downward to rub the lenses against the tea towel, he said, “Ella didn’t want me to come around and disrupt her plans for those girls, but I missed knowing them.”

Whatever had happened between her parents to split them up, the man didn’t act monstrous now. Perhaps he’d simply fallen victim to Mother’s fierce personality, as Josie and her sisters had.

“Do you want me to tell you about them?” Josie asked.

He readjusted his glasses over his ears and nose, then stared across at her. A moment later, he gave another nod.

There was so much to tell. Josie was proud of her sisters. They were exceptional. She sometimes wondered if she’d have survived her childhood if Callie and Isabel, the middle sister, hadn’t been around to buffer the experience. It would be tougher to brag about herself, but Rick’s reaction to that particular description should be interesting.

“Callie’s a research scientist who lives in Wichita with her husband, Ethan,” she began. “They have a kindergarten-aged boy named Luke and a baby girl named Lilly.”

She might have mentioned Lilly’s seizures then, but her father pulled off his glasses again. Josie realized they had fogged. He blinked a few times, then wiped his index finger against the corner of his eyes. Was their conversation affecting him? God, Josie hoped so.

“Calliope was smart as a whip,” he said as he laid the wire-rimmed spectacles atop the towel. “I could tell that by the time she was old enough to talk.”

His sweet, tremulous smile was encouraging. Without his glasses, she could see that his eyes were a soft gray, like Callie’s, and that his eyebrows had the same wide and pleasing arch that Isabel’s did.

She’d definitely found her father.

“She’s still smart.”

Josie remembered the billfold she kept in her truck’s glove compartment. She’d crammed the accordion-style photo sleeve full of niece and nephew pictures. Should she go out and get them? Was this the right moment to tell her father the truth?

“And the youngest girl was only a tiny thing last time I saw her,” her father said.

Josie thought for a moment he was speaking about her. She was about to mention the fact that he’d actually left before she was born, until he added, “She was a happy thing, with pretty blue eyes and wavy brown hair.”

Josie’s hair was board-straight, her eyes hazel. Her father had just described Isabel. Had he forgotten that he had another daughter? Well, he did. And right now she felt ignored, abandoned and outraged.

She should have escaped when she could.

“That little girl followed her mama around as if they were attached at the heart by a strand of Elly’s yarn,” Rick added. “How is she?”

“You mean Isabel?” Josie prompted.

“That’s right, Isabel,” he said. “I do love that name, and I got to choose it for her. What’s she doing?”

“She married a Colorado law professor a couple of years ago. She and Trevor live near Boulder and have a one-year-old daughter named Darlene. Izzy works with kids at a wilderness camp, and also runs Blumecrafts. Remember their mother’s business?”

“I do remember. Hard to believe the baby has a child now, too.”

Josie was the baby, not Isabel. Why didn’t he mention her? She worked up the guts to ask. She should just say it. I don’t take after Ella physically, but I’m just as stubborn and I, too, inherited her artistic talent.

If Rick had made the slightest indication that he knew about and was interested in her, she might have found the courage. Or if she wasn’t alone here to deal with an old man’s reaction to her news.

Suddenly, she wished she’d invited Gabe. Maybe. She leaned on him enough already.

“Do those girls want to meet me?” Rick asked.

“Callie and Isabel?” Josie queried, clarifying for herself that he wasn’t speaking of all three of them now. That poor health or a mixture of medicines or nervous forgetfulness hadn’t caused him to omit mention of the third daughter.

“Of course. Calliope and Isabel. My children.”

The rock that had lodged in Josie’s chest earlier seemed to turn, piercing the tender flesh around her heart.

He didn’t know about her. Or if he did, he’d forgotten or blocked out the memory.

What would happen if she just got up and left now, and never told a soul about her trip to Woodbine today? The thought was tempting. But her father had asked her a question, and even now those cool gray eyes sought an answer.

Did her sisters want to meet him?

No. They had made it clear that they saw no advantage to meeting their father. Despite Josie’s arguments. Despite Lilly’s condition. Whenever the subject came up, they both said that Ella must have had good cause to warn against the contact.

If Josie told her sisters about Rick’s apparent forgetfulness concerning the third baby, they might change their minds. They might want to meet him to support Josie.

Yet to all appearances, Rick was harmless. He was just a quiet old man. And he had expressed a genuine interest, at least in them.

“Maybe they’ll want to meet you,” she said. “I don’t know. I’ll mention the idea to them.”

“You do that,” he said, standing. He shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around in a glass candy dish. After pulling out a business card, he returned and handed it to Josie. “This card’s for Brenda’s dog-breeding outfit, but the phone number’s the same. Have your friends call me, er, Sarah? Sarah Thomas, didn’t you say?”

She stared blankly at him until the dog cued her by trotting to the front door. “Sarah. Right,” Josie said. She stuck the card in her pocket and allowed her father to let her out, then waved from her truck window before she looped out of the drive.