if she could be found. He located her easily. The boy who had been your father…” Marsha’s voice trailed off. “I’m saying too much.”
Charity reached across the space separating them and touched Marsha’s arm. “I know he died. She told me. I’d been asking a lot of questions. While I could believe my mom didn’t have any family, I knew I had to have a father. Once he was gone, I stopped asking questions.”
She’d been twelve, Charity remembered. Sandra had come in her room. They’d been living in a rented mobile home, in a park at the edge of Phoenix. Charity recalled everything about the room, the view out of her small window, the sound of the dripping faucet as Sandra told her that the boy who had gotten her pregnant had gone into the military and he’d been killed. A helicopter crash.
Marsha squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry. I thought it would make a difference, but it didn’t. She never answered my letter and when I sent the detective to check on her, she was gone. Just like she’d promised. I’d lost her all over again.”
She shrugged. “So I gave up. I stopped looking. Stopped hoping. I accepted that I’d chased away my only child and moved on with my life. Then a few months ago, I decided to try again.”
Charity’s chest tightened. “You hired another detective?”
Marsha nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “It didn’t take him long to find out my baby girl had died. Cancer. He said it took her quickly.”
Charity nodded. She’d had time to get used to the loss of her mother, but for Marsha, that news was fresh. Still painful. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, realizing that when it came to Sandra everyone had been sorry except Sandra herself.
“It was a shock,” Marsha admitted. “She was my only child. Shouldn’t I have known? Guessed? Felt it in my heart? But there was nothing. No warning. I mourned her. I mourned what could have been. What I had thrown away.”
“No,” Charity said firmly. “You aren’t completely responsible. Yes, you made mistakes, but so did she. The whole time I was growing up, I begged her to tell me about my family and she wouldn’t. She refused, because what she felt was more important than what I wanted. She died, leaving me alone in the world, and never bothered to tell me the truth. I had you all this time and she never told me.”
Now Charity was the one fighting tears. “I hated moving around. I would beg her to stay, but she wouldn’t. When I was a junior in high school, I told her I was done. I was going to graduate from that high school. She promised to stay as long as she could. It was six months, and then she took off. I stayed. She sent me money when she could and I worked parttime. The rental was cheap enough. She wasn’t even worried about me. She said I would be fine. She didn’t even come back for graduation.”
She turned to face Marsha. “Tell me you would have been there.”
“Yes, but that’s not—”
“The point? It’s exactly the point.”
Feelings Charity didn’t normally allow surged up inside her. She’d learned that it was better not to think about some things too much. Better to always be in control. Now, as she felt that control starting to slip, she knew she had to get away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I need to go. I’ll…We’ll talk later.”
She grabbed her handbag and hurried from the room. After racing down the stairs and out of the building, she glanced both directions, not sure where she should go. In the distance, to the left, she saw one of the three parks in town and headed there.
She wouldn’t think about it, she told herself. And there was no way she was going to cry. She never cried. It accomplished nothing and left her feeling weak.
She walked briskly along the sidewalk, remembering to smile at people she passed. She reached the lush green park in a couple of minutes and ducked down one of the tree-lined paths until she found an empty bench. Once there, she collapsed and tried to sort out everything spinning in her head.
Her reaction to her mother keeping the information about Marsha to herself was obviously an emotional misdirect. Better to be pissed at Sandra than think about all she’d lost. All she’d missed out on.
She had family. A grandmother. And if wasn’t for her own mother’s stubborn ways, she could have spent the past twenty-eight years knowing her.
Marsha Tilson. Which meant Charity’s last name was probably Tilson and not Jones. Jeez, had Sandra even bothered to change her name legally before slapping “Jones” on Charity’s birth certificate?
She heard footsteps and angled away from the path. At least there weren’t any tears to wipe away. She braced herself to have to make polite chitchat, then nearly fell off her seat when she saw Josh moving toward her.
He looked concerned and uneasy, not to mention his usual stunningly handsome self.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, yourself.”
He paused in front of her. “I’m here to make sure you’re all right.”
How could he possibly know what was going on? There hadn’t been enough time for him to hear the story from Marsha. Unless he already knew.
“When did she tell you she was my grandmother?” she asked, not sure if she was pissed or not.
“The day before the first interview.”
The interview. The job. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Marsha hired me because I’m her granddaughter.”
He sat next to her and put his arm around her. “She hired you because you were the best one for the job. She didn’t make the decision by herself and you weren’t the only candidate. It was a group decision. Don’t you have enough on your plate without going there?”
“Maybe,” she admitted, relaxing against him. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be strong all on her own. But it felt so good to lean into his strength. As if he could hold all of her problems at bay.
“Who else knows?” she asked.
“Just me. She needed someone to talk to. Then after you got here, she wanted me to keep an eye on you.”
Charity sat straight up. “What? Is that why you’ve been so nice to me? Did you sleep with me because my grandmother told you to?”
He grinned. “Want to run that last sentence by your common sense? What grandmother asks a guy to sleep with her only granddaughter?”
“Oh. You’re probably right.”
“Probably?”
Some of her outrage faded. She sagged back against him. “My head hurts.”
“It’ll get better. You need a little time to take everything in. But if you’re going to have some surprise family, she’s the one to have. Marsha’s one of the good guys.”
“I know, but it’s so strange to think about. She’s known about me all my life. She wanted to be a part of things. She wanted us to be together.” Her eyes began to burn. She blinked away the sensation.
