Perfect Family (5 page)

For a moment, Alex Kelley faded away, replaced in her mind by her father, by the grim look in his eyes when she had questioned him about his past, his family. A dozen questions came to her mind, all of them ominous. She choked them back. She was trying to absorb too much information too quickly.

He stood. “I know that I've thrown a great deal at you. And I think it's time to see whether the pizza is ready.” He hesitated. “You will be all right here? Alone?”

“I am here alone a great deal of the time, Mr. Kelley,” she said. Even she heard the strain in her voice, and she regretted it. For some reason, she did not want to show uncertainty in front of this man.

He glanced around the room, at the numbers of books shelved neatly. He looked at one shelf. “Among friends,” he observed with more insight than she would have credited him.

“And with Ben,” she added. At the sound of his name, the dog raised his head and thumped his tail against the desk. She leaned down and petted him, taking comfort in the familiar thick fur.

She was aware of the door closing behind the attorney and was thankful for the silence that followed, for the reassuring presence of her dog.
Harding Clements had disappeared the same time his wife and brother had died
.

Jessie felt sick. If her father was indeed Harding Clements, it would explain so many things. His reticence about family, the grief she'd seen in his eyes too many times. She had always thought it was because of her mother, the woman who had abandoned her as a baby. Now she wondered whether it went so much deeper. Another wife. Killed in a fire. She closed her eyes. “Daddy,” she whispered. “I hope it wasn't you.”

Mistaken identity.
He was very good with horses
. That, apparently, was the connection between Harding Clements and Jon Clayton. Not much linkage.
Unless there was more
.

Just days ago, she was wishing to be a member of a large family. Now she wasn't sure.

Ben got up, stretched and put his head on her lap. “Ah, you don't care who I am, do you?” she said. And suddenly she felt tears in the back of her eyes. Not for herself, but for her father. The man she might never have really known.

The little bell on the door jingled, and Alex Kelley entered with a big flat box and two Cokes. She wondered whether she'd made a mistake talking to him, particularly here. Particularly tonight. He filled the room with his presence, with his energy. And, dammit, with his charm.

He didn't say anything as he set the box down on the desk, offered her some napkins, then a soda. He opened the box, took a long sniff, then sighed with pleasure. “You have no idea how hungry I am,” he said.

Strangely enough, or maybe not strangely at all,
her
hunger had disappeared.

He bit into a slice, then grinned at her with delight. She was grateful that he was no longer pushing her, no longer dropping disturbing pieces of information.

She'd tried not to think of herself as a coward. Not a physical coward, nor even a mental one. She'd confronted too many crises as a child, had been a parent more than a child. But now she wasn't sure she wanted to go on with this, to probe further into a man named Harding Clements.

So they ate in silence, Alex Kelley obviously sensing her need for time, even for distance.

Ben sat, begrudging them both every bite, and she gave him several pieces of crust, then turned her attention back to Alex.
You can't run again
, she told herself. “Tell me why you think this Harding Clements was my father.”

“Sarah Macleod, Harding's sister, hired an agency that specializes in finding people. I don't know everything they did, but they started researching horse farms and racing stables, looking for someone of Harding's age and general characteristics. Owners remember good trainers, even if they don't stay long. Using computers, they were able to narrow the list by age and physical features, then started checking out each of the remaining names. Your father had no history before nineteen-fifty. He seemed the most likely prospect.”

“Is that it?” she asked. It seemed rather thin to her.

“They found a photo in a magazine. It was rare. He seemed to avoid photographs, but this was an informal shot of Jon Clayton at the stall of one of his horses, a shot he probably didn't realize was being taken. Sarah recognized him.”

She bit her lip. Her father
had
avoided cameras, often finding excuses not to go into the winning circle when one of his horses won. “Tell me about them … about the Clementses.”

“It's a rather large family … and powerful. Mary Louise and Hall Clements—Harding's parents—had five boys and one girl. Two of them are still alive: the oldest son, Halden, and the daughter, Sarah.” He hesitated, then added, “All the boys had names starting with an H. Makes things confusing at times.”

Jessie knew she was certainly confused. And angry. What remained of her pizza grew cold. Her stomach turned into knots. She'd so longed for a large family, had queried her father so many times. What could have happened to make someone abandon his family? Usually when people lost someone they loved, they turned to their family, instead of running from it.

If he was her father
. She still couldn't accept that he would have kept something like that from her.

It was a betrayal. A betrayal beyond anything she could imagine. A feeling deep and bitter that quarreled with the occasional flashes of hope.
Could it be true? A family. A family that must have spent tens of thousands of dollars looking for her
.

She continued listening, even as her mind was elsewhere, recalling different conversations with her father, looking for hints. There were none.

Alex Kelley's pleasant Texas drawl lapsed into a silence louder than any scream, a silence she felt in her bones.

She felt schizophrenic. She didn't want it to be true. She didn't want to accept that her father had lied to her his entire life, that her life had been a lie. That her name wasn't really hers. And yet another part of her wanted it to be true. She wanted a family. A family like other people had. A home place.
Roots
.

“Sarah is convinced that you are her niece.” He had started talking again. “She wants you to come to the family reunion in two weeks. She wants to meet you and let you meet your cousins. We will pay all your expenses, of course.”

Alex Kelley waited. It was as if he knew that any pressure would affect her negatively.

She looked up at him, up from the cold pizza. “I don't know whether I can get away. I have the shop. And Ben.”

“You have a partner, don't you?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“I'm afraid the search firm did some investigating of you, too,” he admitted easily.

“How much?”

“Investigating?”

“Yes.”

“Enough. We know your father left an inheritance that allowed you to attend Emory University with enough left over to buy part of this business. We know you are single and that you own this store with your partner.”

She felt invaded again, just as she had after the burglary. Someone was looking into her life without her knowledge. She suspected that he also knew much more than he was admitting.

“Sedona is a marvelous place,” he said, obviously trying to change the subject. “If you have never been there, you owe it to yourself to visit. The Clementses own a large ranch twelve miles north, and one of the family owns the Quest Resort. You can stay at either place. I think Sarah would like it if you stayed at the ranch.”

Jessie tried to take it all in. “A ranch?”

“The Clements family as a whole owns the Red Rock Ranch, better known as the Sunset. They run cattle, though most of the grazing land is leased from the government. Ross, the manager, also raises cutting horses.”

Images danced in Jessie's head of all the western movies she'd seen and adored. She'd not been able to budge her father past the Mississippi, or even as far as Kentucky until the end when he could no longer find a job in New York or Maryland or Virginia.

Now that reluctance took on new significance.

Still, she couldn't quite believe. She wasn't sure she wanted to believe. It was one thing to dream. It was another to have dreams come true. They never came true like the dreamer envisioned.
Be careful what you wish for
.

Ben wriggled next to her. She knew he had to go outside to attend to business. He'd had a long day inside.

Jessie stood. “It's time for me to go home,” she said.

He looked rueful. “I haven't convinced you.”

“Is that rare?”

He grinned. “Not as rare as I would hope.”

That damnable charm continued to flow. He was the kind of man, she thought, that usually had a slim, blond beauty on his arm, but at the moment he made her feel like the most important person in the world. And she found herself recoiling from that. This was business for him, and it was his job to persuade her to travel to Arizona.

Mills had exuded charm just as this man had. And Mills had been the worst thing that had ever happened to her. A chill ran through her as she tried to banish him from her thoughts.

Alex Kelley seemed to realize he was losing her. “Any other questions?”

“A million,” she said, “but first I have to … let this sink in.”

“Perhaps you will meet me for breakfast. My plane leaves at noon.”

She hesitated.

“Bright sunshine,” he tempted. “No Draculas.”

“But you still want my blood.”

He looked chagrined. “I'm afraid it's necessary.”

“Only if I accept the possibility that … this family could be my father's.”

“And yours.”

She wanted to retort. She wanted to say that accepting that fact would mean admitting that her father might have lied to her all her life.

She finally nodded. She'd made her point. The shop didn't open until ten. And tomorrow Sol would return from his latest pilgrimage to Andersonville. He was writing his own book on the former Confederate prison, but she suspected he would never finish. It was the research he loved. He'd spent the last ten years hunting for diaries from men imprisoned there and the guards charged with holding them.

Perhaps he could keep Ben for her … if she decided to go to Sedona. He and Ben had a fine relationship.

Deep in her heart she already knew she was going. How could she not? She had been curious all her life. She found it difficult to let a question go unanswered. And yet she had left important ones unanswered. She knew that now. She'd never pried deeply into her father's past.
Because she feared the answers?

And yet for some reason, she was reluctant to let Alex Kelley know she'd already made a decision. She didn't want to make it easy for him. She'd worked too hard to be strong, to be wise, to protect herself.

“Any suggestions for breakfast?” His question jolted her back to the present and she suspected he'd read her mind.

“Where are you staying?”

He shrugged. “I don't have a place yet. I came here right from the airport. Apparently there was an accident on the freeway and it took me longer than I thought.”

Ah, she knew about that. One accident on an Atlanta freeway and everyone was stalled for hours. “There's a hotel around the corner,” she suggested.

“Thank you,” he said solemnly.

She nodded. “You have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the intersection, turn right. It's two blocks on the left.”

“And breakfast?”

“There's a restaurant next door. I'll meet you at eight.”

“Thank you, Miss Clayton.”

She smiled for the first time. “Jessie,” she said.

Jessie searched the web for information on Sedona. Beside the computer were several books she'd located at the store before leaving. One was a travel guide of Arizona. The others came from the American West history section. There was an advantage of being part owner of a bookstore.

There was very little about the Sedona area in the history books. It had been settled fairly late in the 1800s by white settlers, though it had a long and rich history with early Indians and then later with Apaches and Yavapai.

Ben whined for attention, something he seldom did. Usually, he was content with just her company. It was as if he knew something was puzzling her, that all was not normal with their usually complacent life.

“I'm becoming obsessed,” she told him.

He licked her, telling her that obsession was just fine as long as it didn't interfere with him.

She turned the computer off and stood, going over to the fireplace and the mantel. She touched one of the carousel horses, the first of her collection. As a child, she'd saved for the longest time to buy it, though it was an inexpensive imitation. But that hadn't mattered to her.

“
But Daddy, I want to ride the merry-go-round
.”

Her father sighed. “We don't have time, Jessica. Now stop whining
.”

But she wanted it badly enough to pull on his hand. “Please
.”

“
Dammit, I have to look at the horses for Mr. Daley. Don't be a baby
.”

“
But Daddy
…”

He turned then, fury on his face. He bent down and slapped her bottom so hard she could barely keep from yelling
.

He pulled her along then as she looked back at the children being put on horses by their daddies and wanted … oh how she wanted
…

She'd never had that ride, but the dream stayed in her mind, and when she'd seen a carousel horse in a store, she'd very carefully saved every penny she had, the nickels and dimes that people around the track gave her. And she'd bought her own horse. Later, as an adult, she started collecting originals. She wondered once what a psychologist would think. Was she subconsciously reliving painful memories or triumphing over them?