LITMIR.BIZ

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didn’t take a genius or a psychic to know what people would be saying. Charlene could just hear them…

      “Sissy has a baby?”

      “A baby poor Charlene never so much as mentioned until today, when she shows up at the diner with the sweet little thing in her arms…”

      “Isn’t that just like that crazy girl, to drop off her baby with Charlene out of nowhere like that?”

      “You’re right. Just like her.”

      “And I can’t help but wonder, where has Sissy got off to now?”

      “Yes. And the big question, the most important question, is who might that little one’s father be…?”

      Enough, Charlene chided herself. No good would come from obsessing over all the hurtful things that people might say.

      She needed to take action. She needed to find her sister. But how?

      Charlene got out her address book. She had two San Diego phone numbers her sister had given her way back when Sissy was in junior high. Charlene dialed the first one, for a girl name Mindy: no longer in service.

      The second was for a Randee Quail. A woman picked up after it rang three times. Maureen Quail, Randee’s mother. She remembered Sissy, vaguely, but said she thought that Randee and Sissy had drifted apart in high school. Randee was a freshman at UCLA now. Maureen gave Charlene her cell number.

      Charlene reached Randee on the first try. She said she hadn’t spoken to Sissy since her sophomore year in high school and had no idea where she might be now.

      Next, Charlene looked through the junk drawer in the kitchen and every nook and cranny of her desk in the living room. She found two phone numbers scrawled on sticky notes, no names attached, and she was feeling just desperate enough to try them both.

      The first was a chimney-cleaning company. A machine greeted her and told her to leave a message. She didn’t.

      When she dialed the second number, a man answered. “This is Bob Thewlis.”

      “Uh. Hi. I’m Charlene Cooper and I wonder if—”

      “Charlene. Yeah. At the diner up in New Bethlehem Flat. Well. Gave you my number how many months ago…?”

      “Oh.” She vaguely remembered—or she thought she did. Now and then a guy would ask for her number. She’d always tell them, Why don’t you give me yours? “Well. Hi, Bob…”

      He chuckled. “I thought you’d never call. Because you didn’t.”

      “I’m sorry, I—”

      Bob reminded her that he lived in Nevada City and he asked her if she’d like to have dinner Friday night. She almost said yes, just because she was so embarrassed to have called him and not even known who he was.

      But then Mia started crying from her makeshift bed of pillows. Charlene apologized and said she couldn’t and explained that she was trying to reach someone and had found his number on a sticky note…

      “Bye, Charlene,” he said, and hung up before she was through making excuses for her bizarre behavior.

      She changed Mia’s diaper and then sat in the rocker in the living room with her for a while, thinking bleak thoughts.

      Not only had she totally misplaced her own sister, she also never had a date. Not lately, anyway. She used to date. She’d go out now and then when some guy would ask her.

      But somehow, it just never went anywhere with anyone. A couple of dates and they’d stop calling—or she’d make excuses when they asked her out again.

      There was just never a…fit. There was never that excitement, that special thing that happened when you met a guy who was the right guy. There was never the thrill she’d known all those years ago.

      With Brand.

      

      By Sunday afternoon Brand wanted to shoot someone. Or better yet, punch somebody’s lights out.

      Shooting and brawling did not fit the image he’d so carefully cultivated over the years. But too damn bad. A man—even a levelheaded man—can only be pushed so far before he had to start pushing back.

      He’d picked up his uncle Clovis—who was also the senior and soon-to-be fully retired partner in their two-man firm—at five that morning. They went down to play golf in Grass Valley. Brand wasn’t a great lover of golf. But it pleased his uncle if he played with him now and then.

      The drive down to the golf course, on a twisting mountain highway, took over an hour. Usually that drive was a quiet one. It was early in the morning, and Clovis liked to sip the coffee he brought with him in a big red Thermos and watch the sun rise.

      But that day, Uncle Clovis had plenty to say.

      The way Clovis had heard it, Old Tony Dellazola had seen Charlene Cooper headed out of town—going east, in the direction of Brand’s house, as a matter of fact—at a little before seven Saturday morning. Old Tony claimed he’d seen a baby seat strapped in the back of that silver-gray wagon of hers.

      And then, at about seven twenty-five, Charlene had been spotted again, this time by Emmy Ralens and Redonda Beals, coming out of Brand’s driveway and turning onto Riverside Road. Not ten minutes later, she’d shown up at the diner carrying a baby she claimed was her sister’s.

      “So did Charlene pay you a visit yesterday morning?” Brand’s Uncle Clovis asked.

      “Yeah. She did.”

      “I thought the two of you never spoke.”

      “As a rule, we don’t.”

      Clovis waited—for Brand to offer some sort of explanation. But Brand had no plans to do any such thing. They rolled down into the heart of one canyon, across a bridge and then began climbing again.

      “You know,” said Clovis. “Daisy and I always think of you as the son we never had.”

      “And I consider you like a dad, Uncle Clovis.”

      “If you got a problem, I want you to feel you can come to me, that we can work it out together.”

      “Thanks, Uncle Clovis. I appreciate that.”

      “So, then?”

      “There’s nothing. Believe me.”

      “You don’t want to talk about it?”

      “No. I don’t.”

      For the rest of the ride, Clovis was blessedly quiet.

      At the golf course, they teed off and played three holes before, at the fourth tee, Clovis remarked, “Charlene’s story is that the baby’s here for a visit.”

      “Yeah,” said Brand. “That’s what I understand.”

      “Kinda strange. I mean, that is a very young baby to be without her mother. And nobody’s seen Sissy. That’s odd, don’t you think? Hard to get into the Flat without somebody noticing.”

      Brand handed his uncle his favorite driver. “Here you go. And don’t worry, okay? Tell Aunt Daisy that everything’s fine. Charlene’s taking care of her niece for a while. No matter what wild stories folks like to make up, that’s all that’s happening.”

      Don’t worry.

      Brand wished he could take his own damn advice.

      The stuff Clovis had told him ate at him. He knew people were talking, putting two and two together, deciding that there was only one reason Charlene would take her sister’s new baby and go knocking on Brand’s door.

      If they weren’t already saying that Brand had to be the baby’s dad, they soon would be. Before you knew it, they’d be comparing him to his own bad dad, who’d managed to impregnate any number of gullible

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