Molly O'Keefe - Unexpected Family

Yeah, Lucy thought, and you’re the ungrateful daughter keeping her someplace she doesn’t want to be.

“What about your jewelry?” Sandra asked. “You’ve been gone three weeks—aren’t you needed back at your studio?”

Her heart was a rock in her chest. Lying to her mother made her sick, but Lucy couldn’t give her mother more grief. Couldn’t give her a failure as a daughter. “I’m the boss, Mom. And I haven’t had a vacation in years. I’m…I’m burned out. I haven’t had a new design in months.”

Sandra stroked back Lucy’s hair. “This is true. You work so hard. A few more days, then? And then we go back.”

Lucy wished she was rich, and not for the first time. Wished that she could take her mom on vacation, whisk her away to Rome. But she was more than broke. And they couldn’t go back to Los Angeles, nor could they stay here much longer.

Talk about limbo.

Lucy forced herself to smile. “Sounds good.”

“Sleep, sweetheart,” Sandra murmured, and Lucy let her eyelids shut, pretending to sleep so her mother wouldn’t worry.

* * *

LUCY STARTED AWAKE at the sound of her mother’s snores. Hard to believe, but Saint Sandra snored like a merchant marine. Her father had always joked about it, saying sleeping next to his wife was like being back in the navy—no one thought twice about it when they found him asleep on the couch. Chased out of his bed by his wife’s deviated septum.

“Oh, man, Mom,” Lucy muttered, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “We gotta get that fixed.”

The moon in the window was so bright she could read her watch—3:00 a.m. It would be a battle getting to sleep again. She’d never needed a lot of sleep, but in the past year she’d flirted with insomnia. It was as if her brain was a giant hamster wheel, and every hamster in the world wanted a turn. She just couldn’t turn off her thoughts.

She followed the moonlight that lay across the floor in big sheets, heading out the door of the room. But instead of going to her own room, she went to the kitchen. And to whatever dinner leftovers might be in the fridge.

The carpet of the hallway changed to stone as she walked into the dining room and she rounded the counter that separated the kitchen from the eating area. Then she stopped dead in her tracks.

Walter, owner of the Ranch and Mia’s father-in-law, sat on the floor in a puddle of moonlight, small orange pills scattered around him. His face unnaturally pale in the bone-white light.

“Hey,” he said, trying to brace himself against the floor so he could move. But she could see he was in too much pain.

“What happened?” she asked, crouching beside him. She smelled booze on his breath and she stood back up. “You’re drunk.”

“I fell.” His hard face cracked into a grimace. “I think I hurt my leg.”

His ankle, which jutted out from beneath the frayed edge of his light blue pajamas, was swollen and purple. Damn it, it had to be sprained and who the hell knew how long he’d been sitting here.

“You fell because you’re drunk.”

He sighed, looking down at his body as if it had betrayed him.

“I dropped a pill and bent down to get it… . I just lost my balance.”

“Because washing down Parkinson’s medication with whiskey improves balance?”

“Could you…could you just get Jack? Or Mia?” he asked.

Anger popped and pulsed inside of her. “No.” She went back into the mudroom and jammed her feet in her boots, then she grabbed the keys off the counter, calling Walter all the names under her breath that she was raised too well to say to his face. Stomping back into the kitchen she glared down at him.

He stared down at his hands. Ashamed. Good.

“Sandra—”

“Everybody is sleeping and I’m not dragging them out of bed because you were too drunk to stay on your feet. You’re stuck with me.”

He nodded slightly, his white hair picking up the moonlight and glinting silver. Walter was still handsome, a big masculine man, but all she saw when she looked at him was ruin.

“You’re going to have to help me a little,” she said, crouching beside him and flinging his arm over her shoulder.

He grimaced. Sweat bloomed across his forehead but he didn’t groan. Nope, not Walter. Just like he’d sit here all damn night rather than scream for help.

All that pride wasted when it came to drinking. It’s a shame.

With a lot of effort she got him to his feet and when he shifted his body to go toward the living room she steered him instead to the mudroom.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“I’m fine—”

She shifted her weight away from him and he stumbled, catching himself on the counter that split the kitchen from the dining room. Tentatively he put his foot onto the floor and cursed when he couldn’t put any weight on his ankle.

When he glanced at her she shrugged. “It’s sprained at least, and you’ve been sitting there for how long?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“Right, then, we’re going to the hospital.”

Hopping and stumbling and then begrudgingly accepting her help she got him out to the sports car.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

“It turned into a pumpkin.” Carefully, she eased him into the passenger seat and then walked around to the driver’s side.

She backed the car up, gravel spitting out from under her tires. He didn’t say anything and she drove into the night, the moon’s watchful eye hovering over the car.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Walter said, his chin up, his shoulders back. Clinging to the pride he had.

“Tell that to my mother.”

She stopped, realizing what had just happened. Walter had a sprained ankle. At least. Combined with the drinking, the Parkinson’s…he’d need help. And Sandra needed to be needed. Lucy couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Walter said.

“No. You wouldn’t.” But, oh, Lord, it was funny. The Fates could not conspire to help her business, but they could conspire to keep her on the ranch.

But at what cost to her mom?

“Not three hours ago Mom was saying she wanted to leave.” Her fingers curled into talons around the steering wheel. “And I had to convince her to stay. And now you have handed us the perfect reason to stay and I can’t…” She stopped at a stop sign and glared at him. “And I can’t abide by the thought of her taking care of you.”

“I haven’t asked her to. I wouldn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter. You need her. I couldn’t drag her away if I tried.”

She pushed the accelerator, too hard, and Walter winced as his foot hit the car door. In his silence the past rushed back, drowning her in bitter memories.

“Your wife—”

“Is gone. Divorced.”

“Too late. You don’t win any points for that, Walter! And she tried to kick my mom out of her home after Dad died. My dad, who was your best friend!” She threw the words at him like grenades lobbed across the car. “He was your most loyal employee. And what did you do to stop your wife? Nothing. Just like you did nothing when she was beating up Jack.” He flinched at that and her stomach turned.

This isn’t you, she thought, but she couldn’t stop. The bitterness was out of control.

“You stood by while your bitch of a wife ruined everyone’s lives and I can’t just shrug my shoulders and let my mom take care of you like nothing ever happened!”

The sound as he shifted in his seat was loud and she glanced over at him, furious.

“Don’t you have something to say?”

“I can’t forgive myself, either. And as for your mom…I don’t want her to stay. Not for me.”