Cry Little Sister (18 page)

*****

She was watering the ferns on the front porch when Mrs. Phelps sprang from the bushes like a demented rabbit.

“Jordan!”

“Why hello, Mrs. Phelps,” Jordan said, steeling herself. “Can you believe these things are hanging on this late into fall. They really should be dead by no—”

“I saw you,” the older woman said. “He left them open and there were your feet and you were…he was…you are going to hell, you do know that right, Jordan?”

Heat flooded Jordan’s face, her chest. Not just heat, though, anger too. Very quickly she was full of rage and she dropped the watering can, whirling on the other woman.

“Is that right?”

“That is right!” Mrs. Phelps said stomping her foot. “The Lord is very specific about what we should and should not do. And laying with your brother—”

“How may brothers and sisters in the bible fucked each other?”Jordan hissed.

“I…what…pardon?” Mrs. Phelps stammered. Her eyes wide, her cotton candy pink fingernails worrying at her jacket collar.

“It happened.”

“It also happened in the royal families and was forbidden because—”

Jordan cut the older woman off. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. The children were sick, weak, mentally compromised.”

“Exactly. And it’s one thing to be…
unholy
in this way but Jordan, he beat you.”

“He cropped me.”

“He…cropped?”

“Yeah, it’s a crop. It’s about yay long.” Jordan held her hands about sixteen inches apart. Then she laughed and said, “It hurts like a son of a bitch until the fu—”

“Jordan!” Mrs. Phelps yelped.

Jordan heard a chuckle and just knew that her brother—no, her
lover
now—was on the other side of the screen door in the shadows.

Jordan leaned in, put her hands on her hips, stomped her foot. She was pissed. People poking their noses in where they didn’t belong was a pet peeve of hers.

“We found out we’re not really related,” she said softly. Her voice was more growl than anything. “Not that that’s any of
your
business. So what we do, Mrs. Phelps, whether it’s sex or caning or spanking or doing it doggie style in the living room—“

The other woman let out a warbling cry and there came that slight laugher again.

“—is our business. Not
your business,
not anyone’s business…but ours. Got it?”

“But to everyone, even God, you are related. You are brother and sister. You have lived together as brother and sister and—”

“So if we were boyfriend and girlfriend for say ten years, we’d be married in the eyes of you and God?” Jordan countered.

“Well…no, but—”

“How convenient. And listen, Mrs. Phelps, I really do appreciate you coming here and talking on God’s behalf…” She took the short woman’s arm and propelled her to the porch steps as gently as she could force herself to be. “But I don’t have time for this. I don’t care what you think or God, for that matter.”

Because I’m happy. Finally…

“And we don’t care what
everyone
thinks, either,” Gareth said, finally stepping forward. “It’s irrelevant.”

“Enjoy Hell,” Mrs. Phelps said, narrowing her eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll see you there!” Jordan chirped and turned her back on her neighbor. Then she quietly slipped inside.

*****

He’d had to make her tea. She was shaking with rage and adrenaline when she got the front door shut.

“That’s going to keep happening, you know?”

“I know,” she sighed.

“And I hate the idea that we finally get to be together and we have to deal with this shit. No one is going to care that we’re not blood relation. We’ll just be the freaks. The weirdos.”

“I hate the idea of running,” she said. Jordan meant it, but part of her also wanted to just run—run far, far away from Allisonville. From all the people who’d watch them grow up together—small towns could eat you alive if you let them.

“How’s it running? How many people start lives together by moving?” He gripped her shoulders in his strong hands and started to work the knots out.

“True.”

“But we can’t afford it,” he laughed and then blew out a sigh. “Not until we sell this place. We need to empty it and get it ready and…” Gareth made a disgusted noise. “It’ll be a lot of work.”

Jordan nodded, letting him milk her muscles to the point of relaxation. “We can do it. Fuck that old biddy. And fuck anyone else. They won’t know unless we tell them.”

He dropped into the seat next to her and watched her drink her tea. “It’s really not anyone else I’m worried about, little sister. I just want to start fresh with you.”

She turned and kissed him. “I know.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

She was scrubbing the kitchen floor when someone knocked again. Fiery anger blazed in her gut again and Jordan sat back on her knees. “Great.”

Gareth was in the shower and it would be up to her to ignore the knock or answer it.

“I swear if it’s that round weeble of a busybody,” Jordan breathed, stomping through the dining room toward the front door.

But it wasn’t. It was Tom Sweet holding an envelope out to her. She couldn’t read his face and that scared her. What if they were wrong. What if they were…

“I paid a bit extra—slipped a tech a hundred, actually—to get the answers faster. Not really fair, but so be it. I suck at patience.”

“Me too,” she said softly. “Hey, sorry. Come in.”

Tom stepped over the threshold and put the envelope in her open hand. Her fingers were trembling she noted in a sort of detached way. “This is…”

“The results. Yep,” he said and smiled at her.

“Have you opened it?”

He chuckled. “I told you I have no patience. What do you think?”

She felt both relieved and anxious. He knew and still she couldn’t read his face. Every time she’d met him he’d looked good natured and mildly amused. Which is pretty much how he looked now.

Jordan noticed that the shower had cut off. She could wait for Gareth or open it before he came out. If it was positive, they could share that moment together. If it was negative, then they’d be crushed together and what they were doing would be an entirely different thing that it was at this fragile moment in time.

She ran her finger under the loose seal of masking tape Tom had applied and popped it. The tape let go with a mild complaint. It was hard to find the papers within with her shaking fingers but she finally managed. When she unfolded it she saw spots before she saw words. Everything hinged on this test. Everything.

Her eyes darted around trying to take in and process what was on the form. The paper jitterbugged in Jordan’s hand and she tried to hold it still. Finally, Tom took her forearms in her hands to steady her and said, “Focus.”

She took a deep breath, trying to do just that. “Sorry. I’m…jumpy.”

“As you can see by the small graph,” he said, nodding toward the information dead center of the white page. “The probability that I am your father is 99.99999996 percent. There might be more nines in there, I’m not sure.”

A great sob escaped her and Jordan felt her knees start to buckle. Tom pushed her back gently with three big steps and had her seated on the ottoman so she didn’t fall.

Jordan couldn’t stop it—her cries wouldn’t be ceased and now that she’d started she couldn’t stop. More sobs tore out of her even though she was trying to get herself under control.

“What the fuck?” Gareth said, rushing in, nothing but a towel slung across his hips. She saw it happen. Saw him assess the other man, how he was holding her forearms, how she was sobbing.

“Gareth, don’t. This i—“

But she never got it out because Gareth grabbed Tom Sweet, propelled him back and promptly clocked him once—succinct glancing blow, thank goodness—as Jordan made even more noise but for an entirely different reason.

Poor Tom sagged against the wall and Gareth’s towel dropped to the ground and it would have been almost comical had it not been so terrible.

Tom groaned and Gareth finally faced her, fury etched on his handsome worried face.

“Gareth,” she said, suddenly laughing with the absurdity of it all. “This is my father. Tom Sweet. He just brought me the DNA results.”

Tom gave Gareth a single finger wave and Gareth grabbed his towel. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit. I’m sorry. I came in and I saw…and she was crying…and…shit.” He offered Tom a hand after he draped the towel back around himself.

“So…”Tom said, taking the hand offered and shaking with some understandable trepidation. “This is your brother.”

“Sort of,” Jordan said and promptly burst into tears.

*****

Jordan decided she had to trust Tom. If he was half as decent as he seemed to be, he deserved to know the truth of why she was so upset—or appeared to be.

Gareth looked anxious. He’d slid into a pair of faded jeans and a plaid shirt but he paced the floor like a caged animal as she tried to find her voice to explain.

Poor Tom clutched a bag of frozen Snow Peas to his face and waited patiently.

“There have been…times…” She blew out a sigh and sat up. Then she sat back. she moved in her seat until Gareth said, “Jojo!”

“Sorry,“ Jordan said.

“We’ve had moments all through our lives where we’ve…” She stared at Tom’s open and patient face and said. “Well, we’ve felt things
beyond
what a brother and sister should feel.”

Realization dawned and he nodded once, saying nothing more than, “Go on.”

“And we never did anything about it. Ever,” she said.

“Ever,” Gareth echoed.

It was then that she realized he really did care how people viewed them. Probably, knowing him, more her than himself. But he cared how Tom saw them at this moment and she felt both honored and worried for him.

“And when I came back due to Doug’s death—our dad—” she added, feeling as if she were disrespecting Doug by not acknowledging him as her dad. “Things got sticky. Sort of. We’d started to piece it together and we were nearly 100% sure we were right and…”

“I love her,” Gareth blurted, saving her. She knew that was what he was doing.

Tom actually smiled, and though she liked him already, she adored him in that moment. “So you’d felt it forever but you just realized why?”

They nodded in unison. “I just thought I was…broken,” Jordan confessed. “Or maybe that I was too close to my brother, relied on him too much emotionally.”

“I get it. It’s not the first time siblings have felt attraction. Some appropriate, some not. But yours was rooted in something real, and that you were unaware of until now.” He sat back against the sofa cushion, finally relaxing a little.

Gareth grunted noncommittally. It struck Jordan that he possibly didn’t like a new man in her life. Or maybe he felt threatened. She reached out for him and he took her hand.

“It can’t be easy,” Tom said.

Jordan snorted before she could think better of it. “I doubt anyone in Allisonville is going to care that we aren’t actually related. To their very small minds, we are. So that’s all that will matter to them.”

Tom nodded.

“She’s already had a run-in with the nosy busybody next door.” Gareth put his hand on the back of her neck, his fingers sweeping along her skin.

“I imagine that wasn’t pleasant,” Tom laughed.

“Not really. But whatever, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Gareth rasped. “It’s no one’s business, but we grew up here,” he said, facing Tom. “So everyone here thinks it is their business.”

“What do you do, again?” Tom asked, adjusting his bag of frozen vegetables.

Gareth had the good grace to look chagrinned. “I’m in construction. And look man, I’m really sorr—“

But Tom waved him off and smiled. “I have an idea,” Tom said. “If you’re up for it.”

“And that is?” Gareth stiffened next to her, on guard but willing to hear him out.

“Me starting this whole relationship off by being a meddlesome busy body father.”

“Go for it,” Gareth said.

So Tom sat and laid it all out for them, point by point. Jordan kept waiting to wake up or come to, assuming she was either dreaming or hallucinating. That didn’t happen.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Gareth let out a low whistle. “Holy shitballs, Batman.”

Jordan looked, blinked, looked again. She understood the sentiment. It was a bit surreal. Tom had said a farmhouse in Virginia. Where his people were from and where he had every intention of returning. He’d inherited a farmhouse and was in the process of fixing it up. Slowly. With haphazard laborers who kept leaving him in the lurch.

It was four hour drive from Allisonville and should put enough distance between them and the current situation. And with Gareth being a laborer who knew his way around everything from drywall to brickwork, it would give him some reliable labor and someone watching the house in the process.