Finding Her Christmas Family Read online

  Nerves made her hands shake.

  Her hands never shook. They couldn’t. She dealt with the tiniest of babies in the neonatal ward, but today, the thought of seeing her nieces unnerved her.

  She sipped the coffee.

  It burned her tongue. Her fault for ordering it extra hot, then sipping too soon.

  She was hungry, but didn’t dare eat. Stress always messed with her digestion and the cop unnerved her.

  She could admit that now that she was on her own. He wasn’t the kind of person a smart woman shrugged off, and not because of his ridiculous good looks. Yeah, she’d noticed the sky blue eyes, dark, wavy hair and thick eyebrows.

  Dark Irish. Like her adoptive grandmother, Grace Harrigan.

  She puffed a cooling breath over the top of her latte and wanted to cry.

  Sarah Brown never cried. She stared at the coffee and the pretty boxed cake and fought back tears. Then she did what she probably should have done weeks before.

  She called her mother. Lindsay Brown might not look like her, with her short dark hair and big brown eyes, but she loved her. So why was she trying to do this on her own?

  Stupidly independent.

  An old boyfriend had used that phrase as he walked out on her over two years before.

  She didn’t hate him because he left. She’d hated that he was right and that she couldn’t seem to forge a real relationship with anyone.

  When her mother answered the phone, Sarah spilled it all and cried the whole time she did.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Sarah had taken an outdoor patio table at the café, facing outward so no one would notice her or hear her. “Mom, no...”

  “Yes,” her mother replied. “Sarah, you have lived your life with such strength, and I don’t doubt you can handle anything that comes your way, but you weren’t the only person wronged by that agency. I am beyond furious and while your dad has to stay here, I am retired. Give me the name of your hotel, and I’ll book a room and be on my way in twenty minutes. Do you want to put off your meeting with them tonight?”

  “No.” She swabbed her eyes and blew her nose. Both gestures helped her regain control. “I’ll meet with them, and I’ll be strong because I know you’ll be waiting when I get back. And it’s not a hotel. I rented a temporary apartment.”

  “Text me the address and I’ll put it in my GPS.”

  “I will. And Mom?”

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, darling. No thanks needed. We’ve got this.”

  She hung up the phone and went back to the apartment to freshen up, and then, at quarter to six, she put the cake and her bag in the car and followed the directions to the Calloways’ home. When she crested a hill, an expanse of black and red cattle splayed out before her. Loud, raucous cattle, bleating and bawling, just beyond a sign that read Welcome to Calloway Ranch. She turned into the drive.

  Nothing in her life had prepared her for the mass of crying cows on one side of the road and what looked like a huge herd of others on the opposite side, two fences up.

  Hundreds of cows, calling to one another.

  And every one of them looked desperately unhappy. What kind of place was this?

  Chapter Two

  “I didn’t know you were separating the cows from the calves today.” Renzo glanced at the clock, then his dad, and then through the window at the gravel drive running beneath the big Calloway Ranch sign. No one liked the annual task of separating cows from their big, burly calves, but it had to be done. Had he known his dad and brother were doing it today, he wouldn’t have asked Sarah Brown to come to the house. Even at this distance, the mournful bellows cast a pall over just about everything for three days, until the cows wandered off in resignation.

  “I meant to do it last week, but there wasn’t enough manpower,” Roy Calloway explained. “I had your brother here today, and we borrowed a hand from Powell’s farm, but that last group gave me and Kyle a hard time.”

  Kyle was Renzo’s younger brother. He worked the ranch with their father, and lived up the road with his wife Valerie.

  His father poured a mug of fresh coffee from the old-style pot he loved and took a seat. “I’m just glad it’s done before the weather turns.” Then he seemed to notice Renzo’s expression. “Why the concern about dividing the herd today?”

  Separating the calves was an annual ritual before they were sent off to market. On sale day his parents treated workers to dinner at a nearby steakhouse, their way of saying thank you for another good year. Renzo jutted his chin toward the driveway. “The girls’ aunt is coming here, and the bawling cows are going to set a really interesting stage for someone given away as a baby,” he explained.

  “The girls’ aunt?” Roy frowned.

  He looked tired tonight. More so than usual, and Renzo wished his father had asked for help. He’d never minded helping out, but his father liked to prove he had everything under control, which was generally true. But maybe not so true today.

  “They’ve got no aunt, Renzo.”

  “It seems they do.” He explained the situation to his father while his mother finished bathing the girls. He’d just completed an abbreviated version of the story when Chloe slid down the slick oak bannister and plopped onto the floor with a gymnast’s flair. “Ta-da!” She threw her hands into a winner’s pose, then dashed toward Renzo. “I have three things to say to you, mister.”

  Chloe held nothing back, ever. Her personality didn’t just collide with her calmer sisters, it ricocheted. He swept her up and met her eye to eye. “And what would those be?”

  “I ’spected you to read me a story last night and then I didn’t see a speck of you.”

  “Because I was working, and I do believe I explained that before I went to work yesterday afternoon.”

  “’Cept that I was thinking you would sneak over here and read to me anyway,” she went on as if it was perfectly fine for him to duck out of work and read stories to little girls.

  “My boss would take exception to that, honeybunch.”

  “Well, me too,” she insisted. “I took a lot of ’ception to that because I ’spected you and you didn’t come even though I looked and looked out the window for you. And the cows are noisy.”

  “Is that it?”

  “What?”

  He laughed at her, snuggling her close. “Is that all you’ve got to say to me?” he added, because Chloe always had something else to say.

  Her voice hiked up. “Who’s that?”

  His chest squeezed tight as he turned to see the faint cloud of gravel dust kicked up by Sarah Brown’s white SUV. What should he say to Chloe?

  The truth, he decided. “There’s a friend coming to meet you girls.”

  “All of us?” came another voice. A different voice, which always struck him by surprise whenever Naomi spoke. Winsome as ever, Naomi didn’t slide down the bannister. She walked down the stairs like the princess she longed to be, and her neatly plaited hair was a silent testimony to their differences. Chloe had “wild child” written in her DNA.

  Not Naomi. She was an anxious-to-please child, with a giving nature. A born peacemaker. She skipped across the living room and opened the door. “Should we turn the lights on?”

  “Sure.” The dusk-to-dawn barnyard lights flickered on just then, a reminder of shorter days and longer nights as fall marched toward winter. He saw the movement of the car door once Sarah parked the SUV, and then Naomi put her little hand to her chest. “Oh, she’s pretty!”

  “Let me see!” Not to be outdone, Chloe dashed across the room, slid across the tile entry and came to a hard stop as she crashed into the wall. “Nomi. You didn’t give me enough room to land and so I banged my head and it’s all your fault.” She stomped her foot, never a good sign. Renzo moved between the two quickly. Naomi might be the quiet
er one, but she didn’t take a lot of her sister’s flak.

  “I didn’t move,” she protested. “I stayed right here. You just—” She paused as Sarah Brown approached. Her mouth dropped open. And when Chloe whirled around, hers did the same.

  A woman who looked very much like the picture of their mother on the living room wall stood before them.

  He expected Naomi to hang back, but she pulled the door open wider and it was the boisterous Chloe who seemed dumbstruck by Sarah’s arrival. When she came in, carrying a delicious-looking cake, Renzo went down on one knee between the two girls and said words that came mighty hard. “Girls, this is your Aunt Sarah. Your mommy’s sister.”

  “Our mom had a sister?” Naomi’s tone filled with wonder and doubt. “I don’t think our mom did, Renzo. But maybe...” She gulped hard as she struggled to make sense of this new twist. Then she looked from Sarah to Jenn’s photograph and back, confused. “This is our mom, for real?”

  “Our mom isn’t for real, Nomi.” Chloe went back to instant overreaction mode. “She’s in heaven, and you can’t come back from there. Like ever. Mama Gina told us that and I believe everything Mama Gina says.”

  “That’s kept me out of no small number of tight spots myself,” Roy Calloway spouted as he came around the corner. He indicated his dirty work clothes with a grimace and the wailing cows with both hands. “I didn’t know we were expecting company, or I’d have cleaned up quicker, but muck’s a part of ranch life. How do you do, ma’am.” He extended his hand with the finesse of a diplomat. “Welcome to our home. And it’s a pleasure to know that the girls have such lovely family after all this time.”

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed. She glanced at his hand, and Renzo was pretty sure she was debating whether to take it, then she did. Lightly. Briefly. With the barest of touches, and that annoyed him, but at least she did it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “I’m ready for a cleanup if my gals are out of the upstairs bath?” He palmed Naomi’s head, then Chloe’s. “You two look clean to me, and smell good enough to eat up.”

  They giggled and hugged him as Renzo took the cake box from Sarah’s hands and set it on a nearby table. “You can’t eat us, Papa!” Naomi tipped back her head and laughed up at him. “We’re not hot dogs, you know!”

  “More like birds, that’s for certain.”

  Chloe pretended her arms were wings. “Bawk! Bawk! Bawwwwwk! Can’t catch me, Papa!”

  The race was on.

  She dodged right, his father darted left, and within five seconds both girls were racing around the room, squealing with joy.

  And then his father collapsed.

  Like a slow-motion movie, his father’s happy, laughing face contorted. The smile became a contortion.

  His hand came up, toward his chest. His mouth opened, as if to say something, but no sound came out.

  The other hand reached for the sofa, but missed and Roy didn’t slip to the floor.

  He crashed.

  “Dad!” Renzo was by his side in a heartbeat.

  Bright blue eyes stared up at him. Then he blinked, real slow. He opened his mouth again.

  But only part of his mouth opened. The right side was at an awkward angle and his right eye drooped.

  Stroke.

  Then his father’s eyes closed. His breathing paused...and didn’t restart. When Renzo put his ear to Roy’s chest, there was no comforting sound of the heartbeat that had worked so diligently for over sixty years to help build Calloway Ranch.

  Don’t think, man. React. You know what to do. You’re trained.

  Renzo started to rearrange his father’s body for CPR, but someone beat him to it. The sofa table that the girls had dodged around was shoved back, out of the way, and Sarah Brown dropped to her knees alongside his father. She’d yanked a stethoscope from what he’d thought was just a camera bag and applied it to his father’s chest, then barked orders. “Is he on any meds?”

  “No.”

  “Get me aspirin ASAP, call 911, get medics here pronto, tell them cardio resuscitation is needed.”

  Before he had his cell phone in his hand, she was doing chest compressions. Under her breath she hummed the tune of one of the girls’ favorite songs. The movement of her hands synchronized with the rhythm of the tune.

  “Mom! I need you ASAP!” he hollered up the stairs, grabbed an aspirin bottle from above the refrigerator, and called Dispatch while handing Sarah the aspirin. Within seconds he realized there was no way his father could chew or swallow the aspirin in his current condition.

  Sarah seemed to realize that, too. She shook her head and kept up the compressions.

  Chloe and Naomi had shrunk back with matching looks of fright and tears streaming, but he couldn’t help that now as he guided them into the wide-open back room.

  The 911 center call went through. “We need a bus for 4217 Old North Road,” he barked into the phone. “Male, age sixty-six, Caucasian, cardio resuscitation needed, stroke symptoms noted.”

  “Renzo, it’s Clem, we’ll get right out there. Are you alone with Roy?”

  Renzo heard Clem key the call into the county-wide service as he answered. “No, Mom’s here, I’ve got the girls and a visiting doctor but he’s not good, Clem.”

  “We know the way, Renzo. Sit tight.”

  His mother came down the stairs, carrying Kristi. As she approached the bottom of the stairs, realization hit. “Renzo, what’s happened? Roy?” She set Kristi down and rushed to her husband’s side. “Roy, it’s Gina. Hang on, darling, hang on, okay? Help’s coming!” Then she looked up to Renzo for reassurance and he gave a quick, firm nod as he reached out for all three girls.

  “Ambulance is on its way. Hey, gals, how about you come into the family room with me, okay?” He drew the girls into the room that overlooked acres of pastures backdropped by the rugged frames of the highlands separating the Cascade Range from the Rocky Mountains to the east.

  There was nothing to see in the darkness. Nothing to distract three little beauties from the life-and-death struggle in the adjoining room and the ceaseless bawling of sorrowed cows on all sides of the house. Under normal circumstances he’d amuse them by playing a game.

  Nothing was normal right now.

  His father was gravely ill and a relative of the triplets, probably intent on taking them away, was trying to save Roy Calloway’s life.

  He prayed she’d succeed.

  He wasn’t sure what to pray next, but he knew he needed to calm the girls’ fears, and the best way he knew to do that was to pray. Not for them. With them.

  * * *

  Sarah applied her hands to the aging rancher’s chest in a well-spaced rhythm that matched a human heartbeat and a couple of popular songs. A kid’s song had come to mind today.

  Maybe it was being surrounded by three look-alikes that reminded her so much of herself. And the look on the faces of the two she’d met, Chloe and Naomi.

  Beautiful. Funny. Pesky. Endearing.

  Three girls, all related to her, the offspring of the sister she never knew.

  She wanted them.

  She’d known that from the time she discovered their existence. Her sister’s obituary listed an aging father, a deceased mother, several cousins, aunts and uncles and three infant daughters who were now nearly four years old.

  These girls were her family.

  She was theirs. And nobody was going to stand in her way, but as she continued the chest compressions, she couldn’t erase the image of Chloe’s face.

  Or was it Naomi’s?

  In the hustle of moving furniture to gain access to the detective’s father, she wasn’t sure.

  As the wail of a siren grew louder and Gina Calloway’s voice crooned words of love and encouragement to her critically ill husband, she needed to think of one thing and one thing only. To focus on keeping her rhyth
m smooth and her hands moving despite the current ache in her shoulders.

  His eyelids flickered slightly.

  Gina gushed a thankful prayer for the movement and for Sarah’s presence.

  She wouldn’t be thanking her soon. Gina Calloway would probably hate her, and so would the rest of the family. She was trying to save Roy’s life only to take a big chunk of it away.

  Irony at its worst because her goal was to salvage what little biological family she had.

  Roy didn’t know her intent. Neither did Gina.

  She did. Somewhere a door banged shut. Then a movement shifted a shadow between the hall light and this room. She looked up.

  The detective stood there, watching her. Watching his father. Seeing his mother gripping his father’s right hand, her lips moving in silent prayer.

  He knew why she was here.

  She saw it in his stance. His gaze. The strong set of his shoulders.

  He was watching her save a man’s life before she destroyed it.

  He moved forward and came down by her side, opposite his mother. “Want me to sub in?”

  The wail of the siren intensified. Help was close at hand. “No, I’m good. Can you get the door and guide them in? Who’s got the girls?”

  “My brother just got here. He lives up the road.” He hurried to the door while she continued the downward thrusts in a rhythmic beat, and when she was pretty sure she couldn’t take much more, the EMT slipped into place beside her.

  “We’ve got this, ma’am.”

  She moved over to give him room and as they ran an assessment, she heard the conversation over their shoulder radios.

  Lorenzo drew his mother in for a hug.

  He was a protector. A guardian. The dog at the gate, watching for wolves, and she’d come into Central Washington as a wolf in designer clothing.

  His gaze met hers as the medics worked to get Roy stable enough for transport, and she read concern, love and fear in his eyes.

  She shifted her attention to the first responders. “Where’s the nearest Level One stroke center?” she asked. “Let’s get him there ASAP.”