Undeniably Yours (11 page)

Uninvited thoughts of him came to Meg at the oddest moments. She'd be washing her hair and would remember him at the paddock, his fingers twining with easy familiarity through his horse's mane. She'd be sitting in her father's office downtown looking at a document, and she'd remember the way he'd quieted little Jayden's separation anxiety. She'd fill her coffee cup in the morning and remember the way he'd extended those
confounded tissues to her at the top of the stairs.
“I told you I'd have them ready
,
”
he'd said.

Who did that? Who carried around tissues for a woman they hardly knew, just in case she got teary? The tissues were to blame, she'd decided, for the turn her heart had taken. It was all,
all
, ALL the tissues' fault!

Meg enjoyed so many things about Easter.

She loved the boxes of Godiva truffles that she and Sadie Jo exchanged every year when they sat down to share a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon, orange juice served in crystal glasses, and coffee served in china teacups. She loved the praise, triumph, and hope of Easter morning worship service. She loved singing “Up From the Grave He Arose.” She loved the foil-covered bunnies, wicker baskets, and jelly beans that overran the store shelves. She loved buying a new dress and matching high heels. She loved the dogwood trees with their bright new blossoms, and flower arrangements of daffodils and tulips.

However, she did not love the big formal lunch her mother's side of the family held every Easter Sunday. Her overriding emotion whenever she had to deal with her grandmother Lake, her mother's three older sisters, and her nine female cousins?

Intimidation.

This year the Lake family decided to gather at Aunt Pamela's newest McMansion in the ritzy Dallas neighborhood of Highland Park. Since Amber and Jayden had nowhere else to go to celebrate the holiday, Meg brought them along for lunch, and thank goodness. Because of them, Meg wasn't
the only
normal human at Pamela's mile-long table, a table otherwise filled with
a convention of the most stunning and fashionable people the state of Texas had to offer.

All through the meal, Meg listened to her beautiful cousin Heather talk to her beautiful cousin Erin about their children's chic private schools, the merits of a personal shopper versus a stylist, the amazing career accomplishments of their husbands, and their own involvements with local charities. Meg made it through without needing to excuse herself to have a panic attack in one of the marble bathrooms, but only by a hair.

As soon as everyone finished lunch, the children clamored for the start of the annual Easter egg hunt. It was decided that Meg, along with an assortment of fathers and grandfathers, would watch the passel of children in the front yard, while the mothers went to work hiding eggs in the backyard. So Meg made her way outdoors and stood beneath a pearl gray overcast sky while the wind tossed the hem of her dress against her knees. The enormous edifice of Aunt Pamela's house stood next to her, gamely endeavoring to impersonate a French country manor despite the fact that it had been rooted in Texas soil.

One of the kids squealed, and Meg's attention swept over the girls, who wore bobbed haircuts, giant bows, smocked dresses, and shining sandals. The boys were dressed either in jumpers with knee socks and saddle shoes or in full seersucker suits.

In the midst of that impressive group, Jayden looked like a gargoyle.

Meg's heart tweaked for him. Unfortunate kid. Today he reminded her more than ever of a drooly-mouthed bobblehead doll. Amber hadn't helped matters by dressing him in a slightly too-small striped one-piece that looked like it had been through the wash a zillion times.

Still. Out of all the children in the yard, the lion's share of
Meg's affection centered on him. She herself had always felt like a gargoyle when surrounded by this branch of her family. Without a mother, she'd been like a puzzle piece set off to the side, unable to attach to the Lake family because she'd had no connecting piece. A sibling or two would have made all the difference, because then, even without her connecting piece, she'd have had allies.

How many times, she wondered, had she mourned the lack of a sibling over the course of her lifetime? Thousands.

She held her hair out of her face and watched Jayden careen around a cluster of boys, trip over a tree root, and fall forward onto his hands. Meg rushed over and set him back on his feet. “You okay?”

He glanced up at her, grinning.

“Time for the hunt, everyone!” Aunt Pamela held open the front door and beckoned them in.

As Meg led Jayden indoors, Aunt Pamela pulled her aside. “I haven't heard back from you, but you
are
coming to Tara's engagement party, right?”

“Ah . . .” She'd received the invitation to the party a few weeks back. But it had ranked lowest on her list of worries, and she hadn't given it a thought since.

“We're holding it at the Crescent, and you have to come. Tara would be crushed if you couldn't make it.”

Meg didn't think Tara, the youngest of Pamela's four daughters, would bat a single fake eyelash if Meg didn't show.

Jayden tugged on her hand, and Meg swept him into her arms.

“Say you'll come.” Pamela speared Meg with an unblinking stare.

Meg chewed the inside of her cheek, racking her brain for
a way to beg off. Aunt Pamela had benefited from some excellent plastic surgery. She didn't look tight or weird; just fresh, smooth, and impossibly young for her age. Her hair fell, glistening brown highlighted with cinnamon, in perfect layers to her shoulders. The oldest of Meg's mother's sisters, she'd always been bossy, and she'd always been able to apply pressure with a glance.

“Say you'll come,” Pamela repeated.

“I'll come.”

“Excellent! And you'll bring someone.” More with the unblinking stare.

“Maybe.”

“You have to. Everyone will be bringing a date. You don't want to be the only one there alone.”

“Actually, I wouldn't mind—”

“You're
not
going to be the only one there alone. I'll count on you, plus one. All right?”

“Mmm . . .” Jayden stretched both hands out, leaning in the direction the other kids had gone.

“You plus one. All right, Meg?”

“Yes.”

Appeased, Aunt Pamela preceded her into a sitting room at the back of the house. The parents passed out Easter baskets, then let the kids loose on the rolling backyard dotted here and there with partially hidden pastel plastic eggs.

Meg and Amber followed Jayden as he dragged around his basket and ignored all the eggs. After Amber showed him repeatedly how to pick up the eggs, Jayden picked up three in a row and placed them in his basket.

Amber and Meg clapped excitedly.

Then he tossed them out and stepped on them.

Amber groaned, and Meg laughed.

“Thank you for inviting us to come today,” Amber said, sticking the eggs back in Jayden's basket.

“You're welcome. I'm glad you're here.”

“Your aunts and your cousins are beautiful.”

“Yes, they are.”

“I mean, like wow. And their husbands and their kids and this house. The whole deal.”

“I know.”

“Are you the youngest cousin?”

“Close to it. There are a couple a few years younger than me.”

“Is everyone married?”

“All but two.”

“And does everyone in the family live in Dallas?”

“Yes.”

“In houses like this?”

“Almost everyone.” Meg's mother and her three older sisters had all been beauty-pageant worthy back in the day, and they'd all leveraged their looks into handsome, wealthy husbands. The handsome, wealthy husbands had given them gorgeous offspring, who in turn grew up to marry brilliantly. Her grandmother Lake, who had an Elizabeth Taylor–like proclivity for gems and furs, presided over them all with a combination of shrewdness, senility, and vanity. “I only have one male cousin on this side of the family. He lives in a regular house.”

“Which one is he?”

“His name's Brimm. He's the one sitting on the patio, ignoring the Easter egg hunt so he can play on his smartphone.” Unlike her, Brimm—the lucky duck—had managed to dodge lunch and arrive late.

Amber glanced over her shoulder. “I see him.”

“He's great. He's the same age as I am, and we've always hung out together at family gatherings.”

“What's he do?”

“He's a professor.”

Amber's brows rose. “He doesn't look old enough to be a professor.”

“He's a math and computer genius, so he graduated early from everything.” Meg tried to extract her heels from the soft grass. “He teaches applied mathematics, though I'm not even sure what that means.”

Amber opened a few of Jayden's eggs for him, revealing two foil-wrapped chocolate eggs, a bunny-shaped eraser, and a yellow marshmallow Peep. He ignored the eraser, plopped onto the grass, and went to work on the Peep.

Amber and Meg stood next to one another, watching him. “If your cousin Brimm is good with computers,” Amber said slowly, “do you think there's any chance he might be willing to help me find Stephen?”

Meg's attention swung to Amber. She'd assumed that she'd set aside her search for Stephen now that she'd found security. “You . . . still want to try to find Stephen?”

“I do.”

“Even though you're stable now, financially?”

Her expression turned apologetic. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“There's just something in me that needs to find him.” She exhaled and started picking at her nail polish. “I still don't feel . . . I don't know . . .
peaceful
about him. I don't think I will until I see him face to face. I want him to admit that he has a kid. I want him to pay his share, even though you're helping
me. I . . .” Her lips twisted into a frown. “I still want a lot out of him. I just don't feel right about it the way that it is.”

Meg swallowed hard.

“I'm sorry.” Amber's blue eyes filled with worry. “I don't want to hurt your feelings. I couldn't be more grateful to you—”

“I know. It's okay. I get where you're coming from.” Meg looked toward Jayden, who now wore a chocolate goatee.

After Stephen's departure from her life, Meg had never—not ever ever ever—wanted to set eyes on him again. But apparently, Amber needed face-to-face closure.

Oh, Lord
, she beseeched. Just the thought of involving herself in a search for Stephen, of having to hear and think about him, made her want to cover her ears and hide in a closet. At the same time, the tenderhearted part of her, that big blasted nougaty center of the chocolate truffle, couldn't bear to respond to Amber's need in any way other than with an offer of help. Especially because she believed herself partly responsible for what Stephen had done to Amber. Her pride, fear, and silence had allowed him to continue his destructive behavior in the years since he'd left her.

Up until this point, she'd assisted Amber in ways that had cost herself little.

But the truth? That was expensive.

Her stomach tightened into a burning ball, making Meg regret everything she'd eaten for lunch. “Before I ask Brimm to help you, I'd like to talk to you about Stephen.”

“Sounds good.”

“One night soon, after Jayden's down?”

“Deal.”

She'd tell Amber about her own experiences with Stephen. If, after that, Amber still wanted to find him, then so be it.

Meg returned to Whispering Creek, changed clothes, then rattled around the guesthouse alone, growing more anxious by the minute. Thoughts of Stephen dogged her, twining together with the job stress she carried around constantly. She grew so unsettled that she couldn't bring herself to read, take a bubble bath, or work on sudoku.