Janice Carter - The Second Family

Tess mumbled a reply, though she thought this time Mavis didn’t know best.

TESS LEFT the conference room and made a sharp right turn when she spotted Douglas exiting an office farther down the hall. They seldom bumped into one another in the eight floors of skyscraper space that the company rented in the John Hancock Center. Since their acrimonious parting two weeks before, Tess had made a point of avoiding the floor where his office was located.

Today was not a good time for a first encounter, she decided. Not after yesterday’s stunning news. A face-to-face meeting when she was feeling vulnerable might end up with her agreeing to go on the cruise with him after all.

An elevator opened as she approached the company reception area and she jumped into it, breathing a sigh of relief as the door closed. How long, she asked herself, are you going to keep hiding from him? Ashamed of her own cowardice, she vowed to face up to him the next time. That’s what comes of breaking your own rule, Tess my girl, about dating a colleague.

As she entered her office, Carrie waved a handful of phone message slips. “Some lawyer’s been calling you ever since late yesterday afternoon, Tess.”

“Lawyer? What about, do you know?”

“No, but he’s calling from Colorado so—”

“Oh, God!” Tess expelled a mouthful of air.

“Not bad news, I hope?”

“I’m not sure,” was all she said, grabbing the messages and retreating into her office. She plunked down into her swivel chair, set her elbows on the desk and lowered her chin into her cupped hands. She needed to calm down. Perhaps Mavis was right after all. A vacation might be the best thing for her now. Except that she’d canceled the cruise and had no place to go.

Tess leafed through the phone messages. They were all from her father’s lawyer, Jed Walker, in Boulder. Jed. A picture came to mind of a rugged man in a big white cowboy hat puffing on a fat cigar, booted feet propped up on a desk. Or would that be a Texan? She frowned. Whatever, the guy’s persistence was annoying.

She set the messages aside and skimmed through her notes from the executive meeting. The merger was proceeding well now and her part wouldn’t really happen until all the paperwork was finished, which could take another couple of months. Then she’d have to come up with some flashy ideas to promote the newly formed company, glossing over the reality that jobs would be lost as a result of the merger. The prospect worried her, though when she hesitantly raised the question at the meeting her boss advised her not to dwell on the negatives.

“Other jobs will open up with new manufacturing,” he’d reassured her before going on to the next item on the agenda.

Tess had let the matter drop, thinking at the same time how someone like Mavis, underpaid and undervalued in the workforce up to her retirement, would have reacted to such nonchalance. Thoughts of Mavis took her back to the discarded phone messages on her desk.

She had advised her to contact the lawyer, for curiosity’s sake if nothing else. Tess picked up one of the slips of paper and stared at it. Could she seriously call someone named Jed without cracking a cowboy joke? More to the point, did she really want to pursue the matter of her father?

Except for a birthday card months after he left, she’d had no word from him. Mavis had tried in vain to change Hannah Wheaton’s mind about accepting child support and trying to locate Richard. Hannah’s standard response had been, “He knows where we are if he wants to find us.”

But he doesn’t, Tess had wanted to argue. Once they’d moved in with Mavis, all ties to the old neighborhood had been cut. When her mother died years later, Tess hadn’t bothered searching through their few boxes of belongings to find an address for her father. She’d finally managed to wipe out his memory.

Her curiosity got the better of her. Tess clamped down on the receiver, about to pick it up, when the phone rang. She waited for Carrie to pick up and a second later, her voice came through on the intercom.

“Tess? Call for you from Colorado—”

“I’ll take it,” Tess interrupted. The lawyer. “Mr. Walker?” she said, after Carrie transferred the call. “I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to get back to you—”

“Mr. Walker? Jed Walker? Hell, I’m no Jed Walker. I can tell you that much. That son of a—sorry, just don’t get me started on Jed Walker. I’d as soon—well, never mind that, either. Look, I’ve been trying to find you for about a week now and things have just gone from bad to worse here.”

“Wait! Please. I don’t have the faintest idea who you are and what you’re talking about. I’m sorry if I mistook you for Jed Walker and obviously you’re acquainted, though not exactly bosom buddies, but—”

A deep resonant chuckle sounded from the other end. “Well put, Miss Wheaton. Sorry about all the blathering there. The name’s Alec Malone and I’m—”

“Mr. Malone, what can I do for you?” Tess snapped impatiently.

“I’m a social worker here in Boulder. I guess Walker’s already contacted you about your father. That right?”

Tess closed her eyes. Here it was. “Yes, I got a letter from him yesterday.”

“A letter? And just yesterday? He’s known about you for more than a week.”

“Look Mr. Malone—”

“Alec. We don’t stand on formality down here.”

“Whatever. Alec, then. My father left my mother years ago and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. So if his estate owes anyone any money, you can forget—”

“Money’s definitely part of it but that’s not why I’m calling. Your father and his wife—well, I suppose she’d be his second wife—”

Wife! Tess took a deep breath. Her past was snowballing toward her and she had no place to leap.

“She was killed in the car crash, too, with your father. Maybe you didn’t know that.”

The snowball doubled in size. Tess tried to speak, but couldn’t. A commotion from beyond her closed office door distracted her. She heard Carrie’s voice pitch indignantly.

“You can’t go in there! She’s on the—”

The door burst in and two people shot into the room. Two small people. Children. They lurched to a halt a few feet beyond the door and stared at her. Carrie, standing in the doorway behind them, raised her shoulders apologetically.

Tess pressed down the hold button. Her gaze shifted from the taller boy with thick chestnut hair that edged the collar of his jacket to the little girl clinging to his leg. There was something familiar about her. The large, vibrant green eyes and the raven tousle of hair. The same heart-shaped face and a smaller version of a delicate nose. Tess could have been looking at a mirror image of herself at the same age.

She released the hold, keeping her eyes fixed on them. Alec Malone was still talking. “Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that they left behind two kids who’ve just—”

Tess jabbed the hold button again. “Who are you?” she asked them. “What do you want?” But she knew what the boy was going to say even before he spoke.

“I think—well, uh—that you’re our sister.”

“TESS?” Carrie asked.

Their sister? Me? Dazed, Tess looked from the two youngsters to Carrie, standing behind them. Her secretary’s eyes were wide with surprise.

“I’ll take any calls,” Carrie said at once, backing out of the room and closing the door behind her.

The office was dead quiet. Tess’s labored breathing competed with the drumming at her temples. The little girl, clad in denim overalls and a nylon windbreaker, looked anxiously up at her brother, whose brown-eyed gaze never wavered from Tess’s face. He was a handsome boy on the verge of adolescence, his lanky frame awkwardly thin for the baggy jeans and jacket he wore. Without thinking, Tess released the hold button in time to hear Alec Malone drawling, “Somethin’ wrong at that end, Miss Wheaton?”