Faith, Hope and Family

Fifteen minutes later, Nathan and Caitlin were on their way. Thinking she would spend most of the day in the study with some correspondence and paperwork she needed to deal with, leaving Lenore and Isabelle to entertain each other, Deborah turned toward her mother. Lenore was checking her watch.

“I’ll need to leave in ten minutes or I’ll be late for my meeting,” she said before Deborah could speak. “Isabelle, dear, I’ll be out for a couple of hours, but you’ll be fine here with Deborah.”

Deborah cleared her throat somewhat loudly. “Um, Mother—”

“There’s no need for you to worry about cooking lunch,” Lenore rushed on, seemingly oblivious to the silent signals her daughter was trying to send her. “I’ll pick up something on the way home.”

“But, Mother—”

“I really must go,” Lenore said firmly, her expression making it clear that she had received Deborah’s signals but wasn’t letting them deter her from her plans. “I’m the chair of this committee, and this is a very important meeting. Since you’re here, anyway, there’s really no reason you can’t keep an eye on your sister for a couple of hours.”

All too aware that Isabelle was watching the exchange with wide eyes and a somber expression, Deborah forced a faint smile. “Okay, sure,” she conceded. “We’ll be fine here during your meeting, won’t we, Isabelle?”

The child nodded. “I’ll be good, Nanna,” she promised.

Lenore lightly patted the little girl’s head. “I know you will, dear. You always are.” And then she pointed a finger at Deborah. “You be good, too.”

Isabelle giggled.

Deborah gave another stiff smile. “I’ll certainly try.”

It seemed very quiet in Lenore’s house after her whirlwind departure. Deborah glanced at the little girl gazing expectantly back at her and wondered what on earth she was supposed to do now.

How had this happened? She’d come here to attend her brother’s wedding and then spend a few days with her mother. She had certainly never planned on this!

“So, um, what do you usually do on Saturdays?” she asked.

Isabelle shrugged. “Different things. We shop or go to movies or to the playground. Sometimes we go to the dog store.”

“The, um, dog store?”

Isabelle nodded, golden curls bobbing. “To buy things for Fluffy-Spike, our dog. He’s a bichon. Mrs. T. is going to feed him until Nate and Caitlin get back home.”

Deborah knew who Mrs. T. was—the indispensable Fayrene Tuckerman, who served as housekeeper, cook and daytime nanny in Nathan’s busy household. But… “Did you say Fluffy-Spike?”

Isabelle giggled again. “I wanted to name him Fluffy and Nate kept calling him Spike because he thought it was a funny name for a little white dog, so now we call him Fluffy-Spike. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

It was the sort of name one would expect for a dog belonging to Nathan, Deborah thought with a shake of her head. Her impulsive and often irrepressible eldest brother had rarely been accused of being predictable. He’d taken his little sister into his home as casually and impetuously as he had the recently adopted dog.

Isabelle had always called her older brother Nate. Lenore had told Deborah that there had been some discussion prior to Nathan’s wedding of Isabelle calling Caitlin and Nathan Mom and Dad, since they would be raising her as their own, but that hadn’t felt right to any of them. They had finally decided there was no reason Isabelle shouldn’t call her brother and sister-in-law by their first names, though she was expected to obey them with the same respect she would have given her own parents.

It would be a casual, laughter-filled household, Deborah predicted. And yet there would be order, thanks to the briskly efficient housekeeper and to Caitlin, who was much more structured and organized than Nathan. Still, Deborah had been rather surprised by how well Nathan had adjusted to parenthood. He definitely indulged Isabelle, but stopped short of outright spoiling her. Deborah had heard him speak firmly to his little sister on a couple of rare occasions when she had needed correcting.

Deborah had no such confidence in her own child-care skills. She didn’t have a clue what to do with the kid for the rest of the morning, for example.

Gossip traveled quickly through Honesty, and Dylan heard most of it courtesy of his aunt Myra, wife of his uncle, Owen Smith, the town’s police chief. Myra could hardly wait to phone Dylan with the news that Nathan and Caitlin McCloud had been called out of town, leaving Lenore and Deborah to watch little Isabelle. Rumor had it that Deborah was baby-sitting that day while Lenore went about her usual busy Saturday schedule.

“I’m surprised Deborah agreed,” Myra added. “She never forgave her father, you know, and most folks said she was pretty mad at her brother for bringing that little girl back here.”

Dylan had no intention of discussing Deborah or her family with his aunt, who was well aware of the history between them. “Was there anything else you needed from me? Because I go back on duty in an hour and I—”

“No, that was all.” Myra sounded disappointed that he hadn’t risen to her gossip bait. “I just thought you would want to know what’s going on with Deborah.”

“It’s really none of my business. I lost interest in the McClouds a long time ago, Aunt Myra.”

It was a bald-faced lie, of course, he mused as he replaced the receiver in its cradle a few moments later. Though he’d made a massive effort to get over her, Deborah was the one McCloud who still interested him very much.

Not that he intended to do anything about it. Only a fool would deliberately stick his hand into the fire a second time.

Chapter Two

“…And my teacher’s name is Ms. Montgomery, and I like her because she’s nice. My best friends this week are Tiffany and Benjamin. Benjamin got lost in the woods at Cooper’s Park for a long time, but Officer Smith found him. Danny made fun of Benjamin for getting lost and made him cry. I don’t like Danny and Bryson because they’re mean to me. They said my daddy was a bad man, but Nate and Gideon told me not to pay any attention to them.”

Her fingers clenched around her coffee mug, Deborah gazed at the child on the other side of the kitchen table with somewhat stunned fascination. Isabelle had spent the last fifteen minutes eating an entire orange without pausing once in a seemingly endless monologue about her life in Honesty. Deborah had a hard time following everything Isabelle said—even though she had long since figured out that the only response required was an occasional nod or murmured “mm-hmm”—but that last comment grabbed her attention.

“Who said what about your father?”

Licking a drop of orange juice from her lips, Isabelle answered easily, “Danny and Bryson, mostly Danny. He doesn’t say it much anymore because Miss Thelma said he had to miss playtime every time he talks about my daddy. Gideon told Miss Thelma to make Danny stop saying bad things about my daddy,” she added.

“Um, Gideon did that?” Deborah hadn’t realized Gideon had ever gotten involved at Isabelle’s school. After all, Nathan was officially Isabelle’s guardian.

Isabelle nodded. “It was when Nate and Caitlin were gone on their honeymoon and Nanna’s sister got hurt so I had to stay with Gideon. I told him Danny said mean things about my daddy and he made me cry, and Gideon got really mad and he went to my school and talked to Miss Thelma and now Danny leaves me alone. Mostly.”

Deborah tried to picture the confrontation between her tactless, blunt-spoken brother and the equally forceful and intimidating owner of Miss Thelma’s Preschool. It must have been quite a showdown, but she wasn’t surprised that Gideon had accomplished his goal.

Realizing that Isabelle was studying her gravely from across the table, she asked, “What is it?”

“Gideon said my daddy wasn’t really a bad man, but some people got mad at him when he married my mommy and moved to California.”

Deborah frowned at her coffee cup, wondering what the child expected her to say. Obviously, Gideon had been trying to soothe Isabelle’s feelings about her late father and he seemed to have done so with more sensitivity than Deborah would have expected from him. After all, Gideon had been estranged from their father for several years before Stuart’s ultimate betrayal of the family. Like Deborah, he’d had no contact with Stuart during the three years before Stuart and his second wife died.

As for herself, Deborah had never talked to anyone about what her father had done to the family or her feelings about his death and she had no intention of starting now, with Isabelle. “You can always believe Gideon,” she said instead. “He says exactly what he thinks.”

“I know.” Isabelle wiped her sticky hands on a paper napkin. “I saw some pictures of you with my daddy when you were little. Nanna showed them to me. She said I looked just like you when you were little. I liked the picture of you sitting on Daddy’s shoulders. You were laughing and you had a red balloon. You know that one?”

The muscles in Deborah’s face felt stiff when she nodded and replied somewhat curtly, “Yes, I know the one you mean.”

She could picture the photograph as clearly as if it were sitting in front of her—herself at five or six, blond hair in pigtails, her expression pure joy as she rode her handsome, golden-haired father’s wide, solid shoulders. He had been a god to her then, and she his little princess. Workaholic that he’d been, those leisurely family fun days had been rare and she had treasured every brief moment.

He had spent so little time with his first family, his days filled with business and the demands of his active political involvement. Yet he hadn’t been too busy to start an affair with a young campaign volunteer even during his run for the governor’s office, and Deborah had heard that he’d been a devoted husband and father to his second family. Rumor had it that the tragic vacation in Mexico had been the first time he and his second wife had spent any time away from their then three-year-old daughter.

Was it any wonder Deborah hadn’t been enthused about having Isabelle become an integral part of her life? She didn’t blame the child for their father’s sins, but she couldn’t help being reminded of them every time she saw a reflection of her own childhood innocence in the little girl’s uncomfortably familiar face.

She glanced at the kitchen clock, wondering how much longer it would be before Lenore returned home. She couldn’t take much more of this salt-in-old-wounds conversation with Isabelle. “Aren’t there any TV cartoons you like on Saturday mornings?” she asked, seizing on the first distraction that popped into her head.

Isabelle shrugged. “We’re usually too busy on Saturdays to watch TV.”

“Oh. Well, since we’re not particularly busy today, why don’t you go see what’s on? Mother should be home soon, and maybe she’ll have something planned for you this afternoon.”