Just for the Summer(95)

Justin put the car in park, and I stared out the windshield at the house.

“So this is where Daniel grew up?” Maddy asked. She was thinking the same thing I was, that this place didn’t look like something to hide.

We got out of the car, and a man and woman came out the front door. She had shoulder-length red hair and was holding a baby. I knew my brother on sight because he looked exactly like me. He looked like our mother.

We both paused, staring at each other in disbelief. Like neither of us believed this could be real.

His wife must have sensed his paralysis because she stepped in. “Emma, I’m Alexis, Daniel’s wife. This is our daughter, Victoria. Your niece.”

The word “niece” made a lump bolt to my throat.

Maddy stepped around me. “I’m Maddy, and this is Justin.”

Justin blinked at Alexis. “I know you. You’re Briana’s friend.” Alexis seemed to remember him as soon as he said it. “Yes. It’s good to see you again.”

Daniel and I just stared at each other. Like we were looking at a strange mirror. Even with different fathers it didn’t matter. We were both offshoots of Amber.

“I… I don’t know what to say,” I said. “I’m…”

Daniel snapped out of his daze. “Let’s go inside. We can talk in there.”

We came into the house and I peered around. I’d never been there, but there was something familiar about it anyway. Like maybe I’d seen bits and pieces of it through Mom, even though I didn’t know what I’d been seeing.

Roses.

The house was full of roses. My brother had them tattooed on his arms. The stained-glass window on the landing was framed in red roses. A little girl in a pink dress took up the center of the design, holding a dragonfly on her palm. Roses were carved into the banister.

This is where Mom got the idea for her mural at Neil’s.

“This is the family house,” Daniel said. “It goes back six generations. Our great-great-great-grandfather built it. Our grandparents left it to Amber, actually.”

My head whipped to look at him. “Her parents left her a house?”

“Yeah. I ran it as a B and B for her for almost six years. I bought it from her three years ago.”

“You bought it from her,” I deadpanned. She’d had property? “How much did you buy it for?” I asked.

“Five hundred thousand.”

I blanched. “A half a million dollars…” I breathed.

I looked over at Maddy, and she was having a whole conversation with me in total silence. Beth and Janet had paid for my nursing school. They never got a dime from Amber.

This information saturated me. Soaked into my core.

And was this why I’d barely heard from her these last three years? Because she didn’t need money?

Where was the money now? Was it gone?

But of course it was gone. That’s why she’d come looking for me. That’s why she’d latched on to Neil.

That’s why she was stealing his watches and cuff links.

I felt dizzy. I had to grip the banister to keep from swaying. Justin sensed it and he came up behind me and put a gentle hand under my elbow. I was going to be sick.

I was about to ask for a bathroom when a man burst through the front door. He stopped in the foyer and stared at me. “Holy fucking shit…” He put his hands on his head. “Holy shi—She looks just like her. It’s like Amber, twenty years ago.”

Daniel cleared his throat. “This is Doug, my best friend.”

“Fuck, sorry,” Doug said. He put out a hand and I limply shook it. He introduced himself to Justin and then Maddy.

Alexis was watching me. Then she turned to Doug. “Doug, I think we should catch up later. This is probably pretty overwhelming for everyone.”

“Shit, right,” he said. “Yeah. Call me. Call me the second you want me to come back over.”

He backed out the door, looking at me like I was a ghost.

I blinked around the house. There were black-and-white photos on the walls. The people had my face. My eyes. My nose.

“Is that her?” I asked. Daniel nodded.

There was a picture of Amber at the base of the staircase. I’d never seen a photo of her as a kid. I only knew it was her because she looked like me. She’d been twelve, maybe thirteen. She was sitting on the back of an old pickup truck with a bunch of other kids at a drive-in. She was smiling the way she did when she was okay.

“What would she do when she came here?” I asked, turning back to my brother.

Daniel shook his head. “Give Grandpa grief? Get money out of Grandma? Go on a bender? It was never good when she came.”

“Do you have pictures of your grandparents?” I asked. “Our grandparents,” I corrected.

“Yeah, lots. Come on.”

We moved into a living room and he sat me on a sofa. Maddy and Justin took the two chairs, Alexis sat next to Daniel as he set a photo album on the coffee table.

He opened the cover. “This is William and Linda.”

He flipped through to show me pictures of two people with kind eyes.

An old man, manning a barbeque with a GRILL MASTER apron on. A middle-aged woman, holding a little boy no older than Chelsea. The boy was laughing and she was hugging him on her lap. Daniel.