Susan Mallery Fool's Gold Series Volume One: Chasing Perfect\Almost Perfect\Sister of the Bride\Finding Perfect (20 page)

“There's something I have to tell you,” Marsha said when they were both seated. “I've been waiting for the
right time. Which is the coward's way of saying I didn't know how to tell you. I suppose the best way is to simply blurt out the words.”

Charity did her best not to go to the bad place. Possibilities flashed through her mind. Marsha was sick and/or dying. Charity was about to be fired. The town was going to disappear into a giant sinkhole. But no scenario prepared her for what came next.

Marsha leaned forward, lightly touching Charity's arm as she gave her a gentle smile. “I'm your grandmother.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

C
HARITY WAS GLAD SHE
was seated. There was no way she could have stayed standing after hearing Marsha's announcement.

“My…”

“Grandmother. Sandra Tilson, or as you knew her, Sandra Jones, was my daughter. Do you need some water?”

Charity shook her head. The words made sense, but she couldn't accept their meaning. Grandmother, as in family? Sandra had always told Charity they were alone in the world, that they only had each other. Although Charity was sure her mother would have easily withheld that kind of truth if she wanted to. Sandra wasn't a bad person, but she'd been determined to live by her own rules.

Now, in the quiet office of the mayor of Fool's Gold, Charity stared at the sixty-something woman sitting across from her and looked for the truth in her eyes.

She thought it might be there in the shape of the jaw, the particular shade of her eyes. Just like her mother's. But a grandmother?

“I don't understand,” she whispered.

Marsha rose and crossed to her desk. She opened a side drawer and pulled out a slim photo album then walked back and handed it to Charity.

Charity ran her fingers across the red leather cover, almost afraid to open it.

“My husband died when I was very young and our daughter was still a toddler,” the older woman began. “Having her helped me survive the grief. We were so close. She was a lovely, friendly child. So smart in school. But when she became a teenager, everything fell apart. She began to rebel.”

Marsha clasped her hands together on her lap. “I didn't know what to do,” she admitted. “I tried loving her more. I negotiated with her. Then, when things only got worse, I grounded her. Made the rules tougher. I became a controlling, dictatorial parent.”

Charity continued to hold the album. “She wouldn't have done well with a lot of rules.”

“You're right. The tighter I held on, the more she tried to slip away. I'd always been strict, but I became impossible. She responded by skipping school, going to parties, drinking and using drugs. She and a few friends were arrested for stealing a car. I was humiliated and at my wit's end. I didn't know how to get through to her. Then she told me she was pregnant. She was barely seventeen.”

Marsha drew in a breath. “It was too much. I completely lost it and screamed at her like no mother
should. I accused her of ruining my life, of planning ways to embarrass me. I think at that second, I hated her.”

She dropped her head a little. “I'm so ashamed now. I would give anything to have that moment, those words, back. Sandra glared at me with all the loathing a seventeen-year-old is capable of and said she would make my life easier. She would go away. I remember I laughed and told her that my luck wasn't that good.”

Marsha swallowed and met Charity's gaze. “She was gone the next morning. I couldn't believe it. That she would really leave. I was convinced she loved her creature comforts too much to give them up. But I was wrong.” Tears filled her eyes.

Charity leaned toward her. “You didn't do anything wrong. You had a fight. Mothers and daughters fight. My mother and I—” She paused. Her mother might possibly be Marsha's daughter. Could they really be talking about the same person?

“I appreciate you taking my side, but I know what I did and where the blame lies. With me.” A single tear slipped down her cheek. She brushed it away. “She disappeared. I don't know how she did it, but she was gone. Totally and completely gone. I couldn't find her. I looked and looked, hired professionals, begged God, sent flyers across the country. There wasn't a trace. Finally, nearly three years later, we got a break. One of the detectives I'd hired sent me an address in Georgia. I was on the next plane.”

Hearing the story was like listening to a recap of a made-for-TV movie, Charity thought. She was compelled, but not involved. This wasn't about her. In theory, she was part of it, but she couldn't feel the connection to events.

“You were so beautiful,” Marsha said, her smile trembling. “I saw you first, playing in the yard. You were pushing a little plastic baby carriage around the lawn. You were about two and a half. Sandra was sitting on the step, watching you. The house was small, the neighborhood terrible. All I wanted to do was gather you both up and bring you home. Back here, to live with me.”

Which didn't happen, Charity thought, not daring to wonder how her life would have been different if she'd grown up in a place like Fool's Gold. A small town where people cared about each other. A place where she could finally have roots.

“She was still angry,” Marsha whispered. The smile faded. “So angry. She wouldn't let me say anything, wouldn't listen to my apology. There was such rage in her voice and her eyes. She told me to go away. That she never wanted to see me again. She said if I tried to see her or you, she would make sure you both disappeared again, and that I would never find you. I was devastated.”

Marsha drew in a breath. “Sorry. It's been a long time, but it feels so recent. So raw. I explained I had changed, learned from my mistakes. I said I wanted
her back in my life. Both of you. She didn't care. She said she was done with me, with the rules and expectations. She was doing fine on her own and repeated that if she ever saw me again, she would disappear and I would never find either of you.”

Charity's chest tightened as she saw the other woman's pain. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. There was a part of her that said Sandra wouldn't have done that, except she knew it was more than possible. When Sandra made up her mind, she couldn't be budged. There was no going back. More than one of Sandra's men had discovered that too late to keep her.

“I came back home,” Marsha said. “I was broken inside. I knew it was all my fault.”

“It wasn't,” Charity told her firmly. “You made a mistake, but you wanted to make it right. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. It was Sandra's decision not to listen. Not to give you a second chance.”

“Perhaps. I tried telling myself that. The truth is I tried to control every aspect of Sandra's life. Most children would have had trouble with that, but for Sandra, it was impossible to stand. Knowing that it was because I'd lost my husband, and was terrified that if I didn't handle everything, yet another tragedy would invade my life didn't seem to help.”

She pressed her lips together, then spoke. “I left the two of you. I didn't know what else to do. I thought about keeping tabs on her, but I was afraid she would
find out. Years passed. The memories faded, but not the longing, the wondering. I thought about the two of you all the time. Ten years later, I hired another detective, to see 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 part-time. 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.